307
by Dewbox
Summary: Takes place in GoF; Moody is not the new professor, instead a more no-nonsense, yet mysterious person from Egypt takes the supposedly cursed position. The new professor sort of takes Harry under his wing. Harry disconnects from Ron and Hermione. No Slash *HIATUS*
1. chapter 1

This is my first fanfiction, so criticism is encouraged because my writing will likely fairly horrendous, especially the dialogue, any tips/suggestions on writing dialogue would be very appreciated. Flames will be ignored.

I am open to suggestions for pairings, however, there will be no Slash, Harry/Hermione, or Harry/Ginny.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 1

The feast was winding down. The desserts had been all but wiped out and the Great Hall was filled with the sound of people talking excitedly about the tournament. Harry himself was just finishing up a plate of treacle tart when Dumbledore stood up to make one last announcement.

"Our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher has informed me that he will be arriving late." Dumbledore said, after casting a the sonorous charm on himself, "But he will be here in time for his first lesson, if not before."

This statement had little impact on the students and most began to head to their common rooms.

Harry turned to Ron "Isn't it really unusual for wizards and witches to be late to anything? How can someone be late when they can instantly transport themselves across continents?"

Ron shrugged "Maybe he got sick, you can ask him tomorrow, we've got him first thing in the morning."

Line Break

All of the Gryffindors (Hermione excluded) were talking quite loudly when, about fifteen minutes late, the door swung open and their new professor entered. Everyone immediately fell silent as their teacher walked to the front of the room. He looked to be about thirty years old, with dark olive skin and light brown hair that was cut short, he was wearing brown robes and was carrying a staff. Harry could almost feel some sort of aura of power as he passed by.

"Alright class," He said, his voice deep and carrying quite a bit of authority. "I am professor Ra, you can call me professor, sir, or professor Ra, but not Sir Ra."

There were a few chuckles throughout the room. Ra then proceeded to scoop up a wand that was sitting on his desk and conjure a chalkboard. Harry found it slightly odd that the professor's wand was already in the room before he had arrived. Harry dismissed the thought, Hermione would have noticed as well, and her theories would be much better than his, so there was really no point for him think about it. Harry snapped out of his train of thought when he realized that Ra was talking as he drew on chalkboard.

"The first thing that I would like to do, is get you all familiar with how this course is going to be scheduled." Ra stepped away from the board, revealing nine squares, each labeled with a month from September to May. "I will briefly explain how the class will be organized; we will have four major points in this year, these points consist of a test of what you have learned so far and what you grades are looking like overall. Any questions?"

Harry sighed, Hermione was, of course, the first person to raise her hand, bobbing up and down in her effort to get noticed.

"Ms. Granger?"

"What will these tests mean for our grade?" She said "I mean, we have only ever gotten graded on our final exams."

"The four intermittent tests will not affect your grade, it is merely a way for me to see what you have learned." A few people sighed in relief at this.

"However, she does raise another good point," he continued "the Hogwarts grading system and my grading system are going to be very different; almost all the assignments that I give you, as well as most of the practical work that we do in class will be graded using the standard O-EE-A-P-D-T* system, the assignments will have different weights based on difficulty, complexity and size. Your overall grade will be determined from an average of your scores throughout the year, and if your grade is a D or below at the end, you will be forced to retake the class next year. A P will result in you being forced to take a summer class."

Harry noticed that most of the muggleborns nodded at this new system, likely because it was more similar to the schools they attended before receiving their Hogwarts letters, while the purebloods, including Ron, looked stunned.

"Now I will explain what we will be learning," Professor Ra began, " we will start off by learning spells and tactics that will give you an edge if you happen to encounter a dark wizard or beast in the months of September and October. Then, for the duration of November and December we will dive into the applications of charms, transfiguration and potions against the dark arts. We will start the new year off in January and February by learning about how to deal with cursed objects. Next, during the months of March and April the subject will be harnessing the elements in battle. The month of May will be spent polishing up on everything learned earlier in the year, just in time for the exams."

Internally, Harry was very happy. They finally had a teacher who gave them a good idea of what they would learn. He glanced at his best friend, Ron looked horrified, no surprises there, Harry had figured that the idea of a teacher who was serious about their job would not be appealing to someone who hated work as much as Ron. Meanwhile, Hermione was asking something about extra credit which, once again caused Harry to return his attention to what Ra was saying, another thing he found odd, because he had never been interested in extra work before.

"No, there will not be any opportunities for extra credit," the professor said, much to Hermione's disappointment. "However, after the first period of classes, when I have fully evaluated your skills; a select few of you may be eligible for a special class."

"What is it about?" Came Hermione's rapid fire response.

"Only those who get into the class will know what it is about, and they will be forbidden from revealing it to anyone who is not in the class."

"How will we know if we get in?"

"Please raise your hand when you wish to ask a question." Ra said, before continuing, "you will be owled your report card for the first period, and it will say whether you qualify or not."

Hermione's eyes were alight, Harry could tell that she would do anything to get into the special class. He found it to be oddly annoying, and knew that she would talk of nothing else until she knew if she were accepted or not; and in the likely event that she were selected while and Ron himself were not, he felt that she would flaunt it over them. Harry briefly amused himself with the thought of what her face would look like if he got in and she didn't.

Ra spoke again, "Well, it wasn't a full lesson, but since I don't have anything prepared I'm going to end the class here. You may leave."

As soon as they were out in the corridor Harry heard both Ron and Hermione draw breath in preparation to give their opposite opinions of Professor Ra.

"He's awful!" Ron said at the exact moment that Hermione said, "He's brilliant!"

Harry groaned as they began arguing loudly, both trying to get him on their side.

He needed new friends.

End

* O=Outstanding, EE=Exceeds Expectations, A=Acceptable, P=Poor, D=Dreadful, T=Troll

How was it? Terrible? Great? Let me know!

Some chapters may come fast and some may come really slowly, I don't have any sort of schedule.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 2

DADA was already Harry's favorite subject, but with Ra's hands on way of teaching, it became a class that he greatly looked forward too. His initial impressions of how his friends would treat the class were proved to be correct, Ron hated it mostly because they always left with some form of homework, whether it was to write essay concerning what they had learned that lesson, or practicing a spell that they had learned about until they had become proficient in casting it. Hermione, as expected, wouldn't shut up about the special class, whether she was speculating about what it would be covering, or wondering if she had the skills necessary to be selected.

It looked like he would finally get the teaching that he needed if he wanted to be able to fight dark wizards, which was something that no other teacher before, not even Lupin, had talked about. In the second DADA lesson, Ra provided them all with textbooks that weren't on their initial book list.

"I was actually Dumbledore's second choice," Ra explained, "He had initially hired Alastor Moody to be the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher but it was discovered when Moody arrived that he was an impostor, so Dumbledore asked me to come as instead."

Harry looked down at the book that had been deposited on his desk, _Magicks of both Defensive and Offensive Nature,_ by Hildebrand Wetzel. The cover depicted two wizards, one raising a shield and the other flinging a fireball at said shield.

"These books are the best starting point for those who are just being introduced to magical combat." Ra said, after returning to the front of the room, "None of my predecessors have taught the importance of being able to battle other wizards."

Hermione looked rather pleased that there was a textbook, as though she would have no problem with the course now that there was a book she could memorize cover to cover. Ra then proceeded to explain that the book would not be a major part of the curriculum, as it is basically a list of spells with a brief overview of how they were cast and their effects.

"Now open your books to page four and we will get started"

Page four was about the stunning spell.

 _Stunning Spell_

 _Incantation: Stupefy_

 _Wand Movement: Flick or Jab_

 _Effect: Target will be rendered unconscious or stunned, depending on the weight of the target and the power of the caster._

Harry was quite pleased; this seemed like a very useful all around spell for fighting. Ra gave them a few minutes to memorize the incantation and wand movement, before telling them to stand up, put their books away, and get their wands out. He then stacked all the desks in a corner and conjured up 10 straw dummies, each with a light glowing from inside their heads.

"The light represents the consciousness of the dummy, assuming that it is a person," Ra said, "If the light flickers, then you will have merely inflicted disorientation in a human, if the light goes out completely, you will have knocked the person out completely."

Harry was very impressed; the professor was certainly quite a clever person. Each student stood in front of a dummy, and Ra counted down.

"3…2…1…Fire!"

"Stupefy!" The entire class yelled as one.

Of the ten students, only three got anything to fire from their wands, Hermione, Parvati Patil, and Harry, and all three of them managed to completely extinguish the light in the dummies heads. Harry was thrilled, his first time casting the spell and it had worked! Parvati looked equally happy, while Hermione looked worried; Harry decided to ask her why afterwards.

"Good job!" Ra exclaimed, "I am very surprised that all three of you knocked the dummy out, most people can't to properly cast a spell the first time just after reading about it!"

Harry, Hermione, and Parvati were then allowed to leave and wait in the corridor until he called them back in. Harry turned to Hermione after they had left.

"What's the matter?" He asked, "You look worried."

"It's nothing." She said.

Harry didn't believe her, but decided to drop it for the time being.

Line Break

That had been one month ago, and Harry continued to do well in DADA, as well as his other subjects, due to the fact that he had finally begun to take his school work seriously, and people were noticing. Harry was drifting away from Ron over time, likely because he refused to play quidditch and chess until after he was done with all his homework, something that Ron didn't understand. Hermione too, had started to talk with him less, and Harry was worried that it was because he was starting to catch up with her in most lessons and in DADA repeatedly showed superior abilities with the practical aspect of the course. But it wasn't just his friends that were reacting to this change, Professors Mcgonagall and Flitwick were both very happy with the significant increase in the quality of his work, something that they both complimented him on after class was over.

"Are you done?" Came a familiar voice, a fair bit harsher sounding than usual.

Harry looked at Ron up from his potions essay, "Not yet, I still need to write another five inches."

Ron sat down next to him "I don't know whats gotten into your mate, it's like you've turned into another Hermione!"

"And that is a bad thing?"

"Yes, you never do anything fun anymore, all you do is schoolwork!"

"I am simply trying my hardest so that I can ensure a good job and comfortable life after graduation," Harry replied calmly, "I would advise you to do the same, if I didn't know that you wouldn't listen."

He was unsure of why added the last comment, he regretted it, but at the same time felt rather gratified after seeing Ron's rapidly reddening face. However, the timely entrance of Hermione prevented Ron from executing whatever drastic and likely violent action he had thought up.

"Hello, Ron, Harry," she said, as she dropped her books on the table.

The atmosphere became very tense, rather than outright hostile.

"Did I miss something?" Hermione asked, seeing Ron's angry face.

"He insulted me!" Ron said, motioning in Harry's general direction.

"Only after he called me the worst insult he could think up to describe my behavior."

Hermione turned to Ron "What did you say?"

An incoherent mumble was the only reply that she got.

Hermione then asked Harry "What did he say?"

"He said that I was turning into another Hermione, he made it pretty clear that it was, in fact, a bad thing."

It was Hermione's turn to look angry, as she turned to Ron

"I wasn't aware that my name was an insult!" She practically yelled.

Ron had no response to this and merely cowered as she began her verbal assault. Harry realized that she must have been very tired, under normal circumstances something like this wouldn't cause her to instantly snap and start shouting. Harry excused himself from the table, not that they noticed, and went to bed.

Line Break

Harry woke up very early that next morning, the house elves started serving breakfast at four in the morning, so he cast the _tempus_ charm and saw 3:48, so he got ready, and went down to the great hall. By the time he arrived, there was only one other person in the hall, seated at the teachers table. He took a deep breath and walked to the table to confront the teacher who had tormented him since his first day at Hogwarts.

"Professor, I would like to make a proposal," Harry said, "I am sick of coming into your class and verbally attacked by you. I will try my hardest for each and every assignment and all aspects of potions that you teach, and keep my head down in your class, provided that you start scoring my work fairly, and cease your attacks."

"Potter, you have some ner-" Snape started, before Harry cut him off.

"Sir, I don't care what you think about my father," Harry continued, "I am sure he wasn't the best person, but treating me this way because of someone that I have no memories of is, frankly, ridiculous. That's all I have to say."

He walked away from the teachers table, leaving Snape behind with his mouth hanging open at Harry's statement. Harry sat at the Gryffindor table and ate his breakfast as quickly as he could. He left the hall and, when rounding a corner, ran directly into Professor Ra, resulting in both of them tumbling to the floor.

"Terribly sorry Harry, I did not see you coming," Ra said, after getting up,"You're up early."

"I could say the same to you," Harry replied. "What's that?"

The professor was carrying a rather odd shaped bundle in his arms.

"Oh, this?" Ra said, nodding towards the bundle, "This is a cursed statue that I ordered for later in the year, these sorts of things are really hard to get a hold of, so I decided better to get started early, rather than risk not having one when we get started in the cursed objects section."

"Right, it's like that old saying, 'better early than never', or something like that" Harry remarked, causing Ra to laugh, startling some of the snoozing portraits on the wall.

"Would you like to see what this statue is all about?" Ra asked, after a slightly awkward silence. "I'm going to go and unwrap it in my office and you're welcome to come along."

After a moment of hesitation, Harry agreed and ended up following Ra to the DADA room, and then the office, which he had been in with the two previous professors. Unlike his predecessors, Ra did not decorate his office with pictures of himself, or random creatures. Instead, every surface was covered with assorted books, papers, and scrolls. From the titles that he could see, the books were about all manner of subjects, from history to divination and even a couple of Agatha Christie books.

Ra placed the bundle on a table that he cleared off and unwrapped it, revealing the most hideous statue that Harry had ever laid eyes on.

"What is that?" Harry gasped, "Is it meant to be human?"

Ra backed away from the statue and stood next to Harry, looking rather disgusted, "You know, I actually have no idea." Ra said, "But how it looks does not matter, what matters is that it is cursed."

Ra approached the statue rather apprehensively, but whether it was due to the curse or just not wanting to get any closer to the statue because of how it looked, Harry did not know.

"Now, this should give me a rather painful shock when I touch it, assuming that it is what I ordered."

Harry watched, worried that the curse might kill his favorite professor, as Ra reached out and touched the statue.

…

…

…

…

"I've been ripped off!" Ra yelled suddenly, "There's no curse on this thing!"

Harry could not help himself, he started to laugh, for the first time that year, while Ra continued to rant and yell at the statue, occasionally switching to Arabic for what Harry suspected were profanities.

"Oh, you think this is funny, do you?" Ra said, "If you had paid as much I did, I can guarantee that you would not be laughing!"

"Maybe, how much exactly did this monstrosity cost you?"

"... I don't want to answer that question." Ra said after a moment, "and it does appear to have a sticking charm on it, because I can't move my finger."

End

I will not be able to upload another chapter until the 12th at the earliest.


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry that this update was so late, I know that I said the 12th, but things got busy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 3

Harry was having little difficulty with most of his classes except History of Magic, despite how hard he tried; he just couldn't care less about the 423rd gathering of medieval wizards, where they decided that manticores did not need to be a protected species, because they could protect themselves. DADA, Charms, and Transfiguration were easy; he was able to casting almost all the spells that were assigned, on just his third or fourth try. Potions were a bit troublesome, but his early morning encounter with Snape had paid off, as long as Harry kept his head down and worked hard, he would be left alone.

Line Break

This was it. The day that they would find out whether they made it into Ra's 'special class'. Sure enough, an unusually large number of owls flew into the great hall that morning as they were eating breakfast. A post owl deposited an envelope in front of Harry before taking off immediately. He opened the envelope to find this:

 _Section 1_

 _Grades:_

 _Offensive Spells Practical: O_

 _Offensive Spells Written: EE_

 _Defensive Spells Practical: O_

 _Defensive Spells Written: EE_

 _Total: O_

 _Keep up the good work! You have been an excellent student thus far._

 _At the bottom of the paper there was a note._

 _You qualify for the special class! Come to Professor Ra's classroom at 4:00 PM next Wednesday, if you are busy than you can try to schedule a different time._

Needless to say, Harry was incredibly happy with his grades, and the fact that he qualified was just icing on the cake. He turned to Hermione to show her, but quickly realized that it would not be the best time. She had an extremely depressed look on her face, the reason becoming evident when she showed him her report card.

 _Section 1_

 _Grades:_

 _Offensive Spells Practical: EE_

 _Offensive Spells Written: O_

 _Defensive Spells Practical: EE_

 _Defensive Spells Written: O_

 _Total: EE_

There was no note at the bottom saying that she had qualified. But before he could comment, Ron spoke up, "I didn't get in, how about you Harry?"

Harry tried to speak as quietly as he could so maybe, just maybe, Hermione wouldn't hear him, "I did" he muttered.

Alas, he had spoken to loudly, and Hermione's head shot up and she looked at him, "YOU did?" She said, a bit of shrillness entering her voice, "How?"

"How?" Harry replied raising an eyebrow, "and what do you mean by YOU did?"

She quieted down a bit, once she had realized her mistake, "I mean, that's great!" she said, "but what did you have that I didn't?"

Harry was getting mildly angry, her congratulations seemed so fake, and the way that she compared the two of them, clearly seeing herself as superior, really ticked him off. Glancing over at Ron, all he saw was jealousy in the boy's face. He stood up suddenly, "I'm done." He said stiffly, and left the hall. Inside, he was seething, and now knew definitively that they were not his friends anymore, neither could bring themselves to even try to say "congratulations", or anything of the sort.

Line Break

Harry avoided the both of them for the rest of the day, he ate his lunch fast, and completely skipped dinner, so as not to get locked into a conversation. When he arrived at Gryffindor tower, he skipped his homework and sped into the boy's dormitory, without sparing a glance at the occupants of the common room. As he jumped into bed and drew the curtains, he realized that he was now essentially friendless, he had acquaintances, but never really talked to anyone other than Ron and Hermione. Sleep took him quickly that night, and only next morning would he realize that he had completely missed the arrival of the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang.

Line Break

 _Wednesday_

Harry arrived in Professor Ra's office a few minutes before the class was scheduled to start. When he entered there was only one other person.

Draco Malfoy.

There was a moment of silence as they both stared at each other in a mix of surprise, horror, and a bit of anger before Ra entered, he sensed the hostile atmosphere almost immediately and froze.

"Ah," he said "This might cause some problems."

A moment later, he continued, "Alright, Gryffindor and Slytherin don't exist in this class, so leave your squabbles in the corridor. If either of you get into a fight over your respective houses, I will stop this class."

They both nodded stiffly.

"Okay, now that that matter is out of the way, we can get started," Ra said, "So tell me, what do either of you know about staffs?"

Malfoy opened his mouth, and, after a moment's hesitation, said, "Staffs were a predecessor to the wand, but were replaced, due to wands being more convenient."

"Partially correct, Mr. Malfoy," Ra replied, "Staffs were a predecessor to the wand, but they did not fall out of use due to inconvenience. Staffs were harder and more dangerous to use, add to that the somewhat expensive cost of producing one, staffs became, mostly, forgotten."

"Dangerous?" Harry said nervously "How dangerous exactly?"

"Well, staffs don't work the same way as wands." He paused, "Actually, let me explain how wands work real quick; wands draw on the magic inside of a person, and when an incantation is said with the proper will power, a person's inner magic is condensed and focused into a spell. Staffs don't do that, they don't use inner magic, rather, a staff uses magic that is found in nature, you see, magic is all around us, in the air, water, earth, and in all living things. Staff magic is simply the act of bending this magic to your will in order to accomplish whatever task you have set before you."

Both Harry and Malfoy were listening attentively now, awed by the potential of this ancient magic.

"This can be dangerous because harnessing the natural magic is difficult and if you lack the necessary will power, you will lose control." Ra continued, "The results of losing control can be… catastrophic. That being said, if either of you would like to leave, go ahead."

The professor waited a moment to see if they moved, when they didn't, he said, "Which is why I chose you two specifically; out of all the students, you were the only ones that had the right characteristics to do this relatively safely."

"Okay, now that that's all out of the way, there is the matter of scheduling; the classes will vary in length, depending on what we are doing," Ra said, "I was thinking that we would start Saturday evening at 7:30, that way, we can work late into the night, and you won't need to wake up early for lessons the next morning. Does that work with both of you?"

They both nodded, neither wanting to speak while the other was in the room, for fear of starting an argument.

"Excellent! I will see you this weekend," Ra exclaimed.

As they started to leave, Ra spoke up again, "Unless, of course, you'd like to see some staff magic right now?"

As one, Harry and Malfoy spun around and said, "Absolutely", before looking at each other incredulously.

Ra raised his staff and said, "All that I will be doing is gathering magic, and then using it to pick up a variety of books and spin them around in thew air."

When Harry looked closely, he could start to see colorful distortions in the air, at first they were faint, but became condensed and more visible quite rapidly. These distortions would surround a book and then, the book would start to fly in the air, rotating at high speeds around Ra. Eventually he returned them to wherever they were before and lowered his staff.

"For your entertainment, I allowed the magic to be visible," Ra said, "skilled users of staffs can make the magic completely invisible, something that wands cannot do. Another benefit of staffs that is unknown by most people."

They were dismissed after the display, and immediately went opposite directions, neither wishing to speak each other.

Harry walked down the corridors toward the great hall, thoughts of staffs occupying his mind, when he was stopped by a distinctly feminine voice.

"Harry?"

He looked around but saw no one, and nervously said, "Hello?"

No reply. Harry waited for several minutes, but nobody appeared or made any sound. Harry walked away, assuming that it was a ghost or somebody playing a prank on him.

Line Break

Dinner was a long, but relatively painless affair, it seemed that the word that he was attending the secret class hadn't fully gotten around yet, as he was only asked about it by a few people. All of them were left disappointed when he told them nothing of what he was learning. Thankfully, he was seated far from Hermione, otherwise, he was sure that he would be bombarded non-stop with questions. However, shortly after dessert was started, he heard the same voice as before.

"Harry!"

This time he just disregarded it, there were so many people in the great hall, and no one near him was looking at him. The rest of dinner passed with no incident, mysterious voice or otherwise. After returning to the common room, Harry stayed awake for several more hours, as he had not completed any of his homework for the last two days. While there, he was pestered by both Hermione and Ron about the class, with both eventually leaving in anger at his refusal to tell them anything. The common room emptied slowly, when he left at 11:00 there were only six people left, either finishing essays, or dozing in one of the rooms comfy chairs.

When he reached the dormitory, there was a faint light issuing from behind the closed curtains around Seamus' bed, but that was the only sign that anyone was still awake. Harry jumped into bed and closed the curtains, quickly falling asleep. Sadly, he had dreams.

He was running, a dark fog was encircling as he ran, clinging to his body, weighing him down. But he ran on, unsure of what was motivating him to do this, when it felt like he was wearing clothing were made from lead. After what felt like hours, he broke free of the fog and saw two things, a green orb, that looked as though it was covered in vines, and a vaguely humanoid shape, concealed by a large cloud of the same black fog that he had fought through just moments before. But before he had a chance to think, he was pulled from his dream into a new one. This time, he wasn't in a weird, dreamlike world, he was in Diagon alley, walking, staff in hand, towards Gringotts. As he walked, he reached down with his free hand and felt the familiar hilt of the sword that was hanging from his belt. When he reached the bank, the guard goblin stiffened for a moment, before relaxing and ushering him in.

"Well?" Came the harsh voice of a goblin dressed in battle armor, "Are they coming?"

"Yes" Harry, or whoever this person he was inside, responded, "They will be here soon."

"How long?" the same goblin asked.

"Two minutes, at the most"

All the goblins in the massive room, which Harry now noticed was very different from the one that he knew, moved into a battle formation, with shields and spears pointed at the door. The next minute or so felt like ages, and the tension in the room was mounting.

Suddenly, the door exploded. Harry saw about two dozen men wearing black cloaks and wielding staffs, burst through the charred remains of the once magnificent door. Magic raced from the intruders towards the large formation of goblins, but Harry thrust forward with his staff releasing a wave of magic that obliterated the other wizard's attacks. He charged forward along with the goblins, pulling his sword from its scabbard. When he reached the closest attacker, he brought his sword around and swung it at the man's neck.

End

I don't know when I will update next.

I don't really have any thing in mind for pairings, but if somebody wants to suggest something, go ahead.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 4

Harry shot up in bed. What had just happened? Neither of those dreams felt like any dream he had before, they felt like something else. He got out of bed, put his invisibility cloak on as, judging by the lack of light coming through the windows, it was still nighttime or very early morning. He snuck through the Gryffindor common room, passing one snoring student, before stepping out into the corridor and leaving the bewildered Fat Lady portrait behind. He found the one-eyed witch and tapped it with his wand.

"Dissendium"

He crawled through the narrow tunnel, unsure of why he was doing this. Eventually coming to the trapdoor at the end, he carefully and quietly ascended into the basement of Honeydukes. After sneaking out of the store unnoticed, he walked up the deserted streets of Hogsmeade, eventually coming to a small house in the corner of Hogsmeade, nestled behind the shops that lined the street. Harry walked towards it, against his will, and tapped the doorknob with his wand, saying, "Άνοιγμα Πριν από τον κύριο"* the door swung open and Harry stepped inside.

Everything went black.

Harry awoke in his bed, with no memory of what had just happened.

Line Break

At breakfast, Neville turned to him, "Who do you think is going to be selected tonight?"

(A/N: I think that I messed something up in the timeline here, but just pretend that the champions didn't get selected until two days later.)

Harry stopped eating, "What do you mean?"

"Who is going to be selected to represent Hogwarts in the Triwizard Tournament?"

"Oh, that." Harry said, confused until he remembered that he had missed the first dinner after the other schools had arrived, "I don't know."

"I know that this doesn't align with how I'm supposed to feel," Neville said, "But I think that it's going to be Cedric Diggory."

"You may be right, he definitely would deserve it," Harry admitted, "and it would be good for Hufflepuff, as they are regarded as the losers of Hogwarts."

"Yeah."

The conversation ended, both boys returning to their meals, with Harry still contemplating the two weird dreams that he had. In DADA that morning, Ra taught them that almost all spells could be blocked with some simple charms,

"So, an especially evil wizard fires the killing curse, which is supposedly impossible to block, at you." He began, " All you that you would need to do, is use the levitation charm, to fling a rock or whatever happens to be in the area, in the path of the curse like so."

He then asked Dean Thomas to fire a stunning spell at him. The red jet of light sped towards Ra, who flicked his wand, causing a book to fly from his desk, intercepting the spell just before it could reach him.

"See? Another spell that you can use is Accio, also known as the summoning charm, the process is similar, albeit a bit harder to pull off as it doesn't have the fine control of Wingardium Leviosa. Or, if you have the skills necessary, you can conjure an object, but it is usually easier to levitate an object. Now, I don't expect you to be able to successfully pull off this move anytime soon, as it takes tremendous skill and reaction time to block a spell this way."

They spent the rest of the lesson trying to move rocks quickly and accurately enough to block some marbles that Ra was banishing towards them a bit slower than the average spell moved. No one managed to block the marble on their first try, but by the end of the lesson, Harry, Hermione, Seamus, and Lavender managed to deflect it enough that they did not get hit.

"All right class," Ra said, after about an hour of practice. "We will now do a quick written test.

Ra dismissed everyone after about half an hour, and gave them all a short 8 inch essay to complete about other charms that could be used as defense in a wizard battle.

Line Break

Dinner came remarkably fast, his lessons and lunch feeling like a blur. The great hall was abuzz with people talking excitedly about the tournament and their guesses for who the champions were going to be. The talking did not die down at any point during the meal and dessert, and it only got quieter when Dumbledore stood up.

"We will now select the champions for the Triwizard Tournament." He walked over to the goblet and held his hand out. Moments later, the goblet flared up and a slip of paper flew out. Dumbledore caught it and read out, "Fleur Delacour!". A witch with long blonde hair and wearing what Harry assumed was the uniform of Beauxbatons. The next slip was Durmstrang's champion, Viktor Krum. Finally, the Hogwarts champion was chosen, "Cedric Diggory!" exclaimed Dumbeldore. There was much pandemonium in the hall, as students either celebrated Cedric's nomination, or complained loudly that he was not the best person for the position.

Then, almost simultaneously, everyone in the hall stopped talking, and instead were looking at the Goblet. Said Goblet was now flaring up again, and even Dumbledore had lost his usual jolly demeanor, and now just looked confused. Sure enough, moments later, a slip of paper shot out of the Goblet, and Harry had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Harry Potter."

As one, everybody in the hall looked at him incredulously.

Sighing, he stood up and walked toward the door that the other champions had walked through.

It looked like, for him, it was going to be just another normal year.

Line Break

Well, that could have gone better, Harry thought as he walked up the stairs towards the Gryffindor common room. No one had believed that he was innocent, with the possible exception of Ra, who just sat in a corner, saying nothing. Although, it probably didn't help that the only defense he had was that whoever wrote his name on the paper had way better handwriting than him. When he entered the common room, he was greeted with an explosion of noise, people congratulating him, added to the noise of several dozen noisemakers that the Weasley twins had set off. Harry groaned, why did this have to be a celebration?

"How did you do it Harry?" Was the most commonly repeated phrase that night, with a few "Congratulations!" mixed in. Harry struggled to fight his way through the horde of housemates that surrounded him. Eventually, he broke through and sprinted up the stairs into the 4th year boy's dormitory, shutting the door behind him. He walked over to his four-poster, before noticing Ron sitting on his bed.

"So, how did you do it?" Ron asked stiffly.

"I didn't"

"Really."

"Really."

"Seems weird that you wouldn't tell me." Ron replied, after a moment.

"Exactly, if I knew how, I would have told you."

"Yeah, right." Ron said, before shutting the curtains around his bed.

That was it. Harry had been considering dropping Ron as his friend, and his behavior had just sealed the deal.

Line Break

The rest of the week was awful, there was no there way to describe it; Hufflepuff and Slytherin were attacking him mercilessly, while the Ravenclaws weren't particularly angry about him being chosen, but did not believe that he didn't enter himself into the tournament. Even his entire house, who had originally celebrated the fact that a Gryffindor was representing Hogwarts, eventually fell into the same disbelief that dominated the majority of the school. That mysterious woman's voice kept saying things too, sometimes his name, like before, and other times weird phrases like, "There is no freedom in this", which just confused Harry. The only bright spot was the first of Ra's lessons, which he was on his way to.

He opened the door to see Ra sitting at his desk, and Draco Malfoy nowhere in sight.

"Ah, Mr. Potter," Ra said, "So glad you could make it, we'll wait a few minutes for Mr. Malfoy to show up."

"Ok."

They waited a minute or two, before Ra spoke up again, "I knew your father."

"How?" Harry replied, surprised.

"He came to Egypt, I was working as a librarian at the Hyperion Library, which was built while the Greeks occupied Egypt, hence the name. Anyway, your father wanted a scroll about-"

Draco Malfoy entering the room cut him off.

"I'll tell you later, Mr. Potter." Ra said, before turning to Draco, "Mr. Malfoy, how good of you to join us."

"Sorry Professor, I was waylaid by Peeves on the way here" Malfoy said, sounding genuinely sorry, something that surprised Harry.

"No matter, we will get started immediately," Ra said, "Today we will be getting started on making your staffs. A staff consists of four components; first, wood from a special variety of magical tree; second, a magical gemstone, which will be inset in your staff; third, a special dust that is created from the shed skin of an Occamy; fourth, water from a magical spring, located in the jungles of Africa. Now, there are easier to find substitutes for these components, but the resulting staff will not perform as well."

Harry was stunned, things just got a lot more complicated and, judging by Draco's face, he felt the same way.

"Let me explain how the staff is made; once all the ingredients have been collected, you need to carve the wood that you collected into a comfortable shape, and set the gemstone in the top of the staff."

At this, Harry raised his hand, and when Ra stopped he asked, "Where is the gemstone in your staff?"

"Oh, right," Ra said, "I used staff magic to weave a field of invisibility over it, so that people aren't encouraged to steal it."

He looked at his staff for a moment before an spherical orange gemstone, about as large as a tennis ball, appeared in the top of his staff.

"This is a very expensive gemstone; I reckon that it could go for upwards of 24,000 galleons, which is why I didn't by it." Ra said, "And I don't expect you two to empty your bank vaults for this class, so we will be getting these from their natural source, a very deep cave in northern Europe. But that's for next week; today we are going to be getting the wood for your staffs."

He walked over to his desk and picked up three medallions, "I'm going make these into voice activated portkeys, so if you are in severe danger, or get separated, touch your medallion and say 'Safe haven', you will be transported back to this office. And don't worry; these portkeys have been sanctioned by Dumbledore, meaning that you won't get smashed against the Hogwarts wards." He then tapped each medallion with his wand, saying ' _portus_ '; and then gave one each to Harry and Draco, keeping one for himself.

Ra picked up a long metal rod. "This is also a portkey, it will bring us to our objective, and when we are done, we will use our medallions to come back."

They all grabbed the rod, and Ra said, "Ταξίδι**"

Instantly, Harry felt a jerk at his navel followed by the nausea inducing spinning. After a short time, the spinning stopped and Harry fell to his knees. When he looked up, both Draco and Ra were still standing, just looking a bit dizzy. He looked around; they were in a land he did not recognize, standing atop a hill overlooking an immense forest that surrounded them on all sides. Also, the sun was still slightly above the hills, whereas in Hogwarts, the sun was already down.

"Alright, this component should be relatively easy to gather, except for one thing."

Ra conjured two axes, "Using magic to harvest the wood will taint it. All you have to do is go into that forest, find a tree that calls to you, and use the axe to chop off a branch that is the right size for your staff. You want a branch that should reach your neck from the ground, and it has to be at least one and a half inches in diameter, without any major crooked points."

He gave them each an axe and said, "I will wait here for you, take as long as you'd like, nothing in these woods is harmful."

Harry and Draco departed in opposite directions down the hill. Walking swiftly, Harry soon reached the edge of the forest, which had a canopy so thick that he was almost completely shrouded in darkness, just a few meters in.

The darkness pressed around him, and the air felt heavy, as if there was an extremely thick fog around him. When he tried to cast _Lumos,_ the light just flickered for a moment before dying completely, so Harry decided to sit against a tree and wait a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. While he sat, he realized that the forest was silent; there were no noises of animals or anything, but as time passed, he could start to hear a faint whispering sound, coming from right behind him. He stood up and walked around the tree, peering into the darkness. Nothing could be seen, apart from more trees. Harry waited for a while before hesitantly saying,

"Hello?"

Nothing; even the faint whispering he heard earlier had cut out.

…

…

…

Then the whispering started again, coming from all directions. Pretty freaked out now, Harry tried to cast _lumos_ again. This time, the light flared up for about half a second before dimming into nothing. However, even though the spell failed, it partially accomplished his goal of seeing what was around him. Harry advanced cautiously deeper into the forest, the whispering intensifying, and the air only getting thicker. Then he realized he had felt this heaviness before; when Ra was performing his staff magic and then again in that Gringotts dream. This was the feeling of natural magic, and his wand magic was probably conflicting with it, making it like trying to light a match in the rain.

His eyes had adjusted fully by this point, and he could see enough to avoid at least most of the branches and roots. Then he remembered what Ra had said, "Find a tree that calls to you.", Harry had assumed that he meant like how his wand had chosen him, that he would just get a feeling. Not that it would be literally calling for him. He walked with new confidence, changing direction based on how loud the whispering was; eventually coming to a stop in front of a tree, where the whispering was loud enough that it sounded like somebody was talking directly to him, even if he couldn't make out the words.

Harry laid a hand on the tree and the whispering stopped as the tree began to glow. Its glow was so bright that it lit up the surrounding as if it were day, and Harry had to avert his eyes. After a moment, the tree dimmed enough that Harry could look at it; and it wasn't like any tree he had ever seen before, its bark was almost almost a pure white, with flecks of very light green, it was very tall and had branches starting at his shoulder. Harry started to examine the branches, when none of the ones near the ground fit the qualifications, Harry started to climb, he was very good at climbing, as he often used trees to escape Dudley or Marge's dog, Ripper. Although, he had never been carrying an ax as he climbed, which made it a good deal more difficult. Eventually, when he was about four meters off the ground, he found a suitable branch, it might have been a bit long, but he could cut it short later. After about ten minutes of chopping, a rather awkward task when straddling a tree branch, the branch fell to the ground.

Somehow, Harry managed to find his way back to the hill that he had come from, it almost seemed like the trees were helping him, before there were always branches for him to whack his head on, and roots to trip over, but now, it was like there was a path prepared for him. Both Ra and Draco were waiting for him when he returned, and they appeared to be chatting, before they spotted Harry coming up the hill.

"Well, that didn't take too long." Ra said.

"How long was it?" Harry asked in reply

"Only about three and a half hours."

Harry was surprised, it had only felt like an hour at most.

"Okay, let us return now." Ra said, touching his medallion.

"Safe Haven."

For the second time that night, Harry felt like he was going to throw up.

End

*English Meaning: Open before your master.

** English Meaning: Travel

(At least according to google translate, which I know is unreliable at best.)


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 5

Following a somewhat awkward trip to the dungeons to drop off Malfoy, Harry turned to Ra and asked, "You were saying that you knew my father?"

"Ah, Yes" Ra said, "He came to the Hyperion Library, where I worked for a time. He said he was looking for a book regarding ancient magical families, though he never said for what reason. But, as it turned out that the book in question was important to some dark wizards, who broke into the library and stole the book, just a few hours before James came."

Ra stopped talking to gather his thoughts.

"Being the good librarian that I am, I decided to take up my staff and help him track the theives down. What followed was a rather long chase, spanning two months and three continents." Ra continued, "Eventually though, we managed to trap them in their lair in Austria, where, somewhat foolishly, the two of us decided to take them on. It was a tough fight, the theives were not trained fighters, but they outnumbered us six to one. But we coped, your father was one of the best duelers I've ever seen, and that invisibility cloak of his was very useful as well."

Harry was intrigued, here was someone who had spent two months with his father, and for once, didn't seem to mind telling Harry about him.

"Well, here we are," Ra said as they arrived in front of the Fat Lady, "If you can come an hour or two earlier next week, I can tell you about our adventure in greater detail."

"Really?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Of course, if you don't want to-" Ra started

"Oh, no." Harry said suddenly, "I'd like that."

"Alright then," Ra said, "Goodnight, Mr. Potter."

"Goodnight Professor."

Ra departed, and Harry entered the common room, and suddenly wished that he had stayed in the corridor.

Hermione was sitting on one of the chairs near the fire, asleep. Clearly, she had intended to try and extract any information from Harry as soon as he came back, but had not anticipated him coming in this late. Harry walked towards the stairs to the boys dormitory, carefully avoiding the books, parchments, and chess pieces scattered about the ground before reaching the stairs and creeping up into the dormitory. Then, when he was just climbing into bed, he realized that he hadn't heard that voice in his head, ever since he had entered the forest, whereas before, he couldn't go half an hour without hearing it in some form.

Maybe the magic in the forest had fixed his mind. Or maybe he had only imagined that someone was talking to him in the first place.

These thoughts, mingled with images of his father battling dark wizards accompanied him to sleep.

He awoke late the next day, a quick scan of the dormitory revealed that all the other boys had already left and, stepping out of bed, Harry realized that he had never gotten changed and was still wearing his dirt smeared robes. He opened his footlocker to find a change of clothes. As he searched, he came upon his invisibility cloak and paused, imagining his father wearing this cloak to fight dark wizards. He picked it up, and out fell a small slip of paper. How had that gotten there? Curiously, Harry picked it up, reading:

 _Cathir rachi xourq gila vaasi Helind, chisi_

 _Xigkouchi:_

 _Άνοιγμα Πριν από τον κύριο_

The first two lines appeared to be some sort of gibberish, and the second line was in Greek, he realized, although he could not read it. Then, as he studied the paper, it hit him; the handwriting on the paper was exactly like his own, which meant that he likely wrote this message while he was asleep, or maybe he wrote it as to remind himself of something right before getting obliviated. Not for the first time, Harry couldn't help but get frustrated by the way that every school year spirals out of control, usually resulting in at least one life threatening situation. Harry felt like casting _Incendio_ on the paper and throwing it out the window, but thought better of it. He took one last glance at it before changing and leaving the dormitory.

In class, Harry noticed something very odd. Every time he would cast a spell, it felt like some sort of cold liquid would flow through his arm and into his wand before the feeling disappeared. Also, he had no difficulty whatsoever casting the spells; in Transfiguration, he was able to turn a large pot into a fox and back on his first try, something that astonished McGonagall. As he sat, he thought about what could have caused this because, even though he wasn't that interested in History of Magic, he had never heard of anyone becoming good at magic overnight. It had to have something to do with the time that he spent in the forest, he realized, before deciding to ask Professor Ra after today's DADA lesson.

DADA was, like Transfiguration and Charms, very easy, the shield charm that they learned, _Psychica Protecto,_ which was used as a temporary protection against Magics that affected the mind like _Legilimens_ , was not a challenge and Harry was able to cast it after one try, and hold it for 2 minutes on his third try. After he cancelled the spell, he noticed Ra walking towards him.

"Mr. Potter, stay after class, please." Ra said, quietly, so as not to draw attention from the rest of the class.

After the lesson was over, Ra sat down at his desk and said, "You had no difficulties with the _Psychica Protecto,_ and from what I heard in the teacher's lounge, you had no trouble in any of your classes today."

"Yes Sir," Harry replied, "I was wondering about that, and was going to ask you after class today."

"Do you feel anything when you cast spells?"

"Yes, it feels like there is ice in my veins that flows into my wand."

"What was it like for you in the forest last night?" Ra asked

"I heard whispers, and then as I got farther in, the air started to get heavier, like there was a super thick fog over the forest." Harry said, "Oh, and my wand did not work."

"Excellent!" Ra said loudly, surprising Harry, "I was hoping that that would be the case."

"Why?"

"Well, when magically gifted people enter an area that is very magical, they occasionally feel the magic," Ra explained, "Usually exactly like how you described. And, in rare cases, they become more attuned with magic, and can start to feel it everywhere, including in their own body."

"Okay, but I don't see how that explains my newfound ability with spellcasting."

"Think of it like this; anyone can pile together a bunch of sticks and logs to try and make a fire, but somebody who knows how fire works can build a better one, allowing for proper air circulation, finding the best fuels, and piling them in such a way that it burns hotter or longer. Becoming attuned with magic makes you like the second person, you can feel magic, and, while you may not yet know how it works, are instinctively better at manipulating it, which is a very valuable tool for any staff using wizard."

There was a moment of silence, before Ra said, "Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sir." Harry said, before asking, "Why can't I feel any magic here in Hogwarts? I mean, with so many witches and wizards concentrated in a place like this, which has housed magical people for several centuries now, surely I should be feeling something, right?"

"Excellent question." Ra replied, "The reason is that it can be dangerous to become magically attuned when you are young, and so the founders decided to protect their students with some specialized wards, that keep the magic from affecting people in this way, though I do not know what wards these are. Oh, and the reason that I still allowed you to enter the forest, was because you, and Mr. Malfoy, were the only ones in my class whose inner magic was mature enough."

"Mature enough?"

"Yes, inner magic is like a separate living being, and like all humans, some grow and mature faster than others, and while it is still young, it is more susceptible to harm from magical attunement, which is a shame because it is only possible to become magically attuned when your inner magic is young enough." Ra said, "But, a few lucky wizards reach a point where their inner magic is young enough to become magically attuned, yet matured to a point that the chance of harm in nonexistent."

Harry's head was spinning, it was all so confusing, and yet it still made sense somehow.

"If that is all, you may leave." Ra said, "My lecture is finished."

Harry turned to leave, before stopping and deciding to take a chance.

"Do you know what this says?" He asked, placing the note on Ra's desk.

"I can read this only partially, I'm afraid." Ra said, "The third line, 'Άνοιγμα Πριν από τον κύριο' means 'Open before your master'. But I can't read the other two; I have never seen a language like that before."

"Thank you, Sir" Harry turned to leave, but Ra said,

"If I'm not mistaken though, this is your handwriting is it not?"

"Yes, but I don't remember writing it."

"Interesting, I will think on this."

Line Break

Harr lay in bed, studying the paper, earlier it had seemed as though it had shimmered, was it just his imagination?

"Nox." He said, finally giving up and extinguishing his Lumos charm. As he placed the not back on his bedside table, he noticed it beginning to glow orange. Excitedly, he grabbed the paper and studied it ever more closely as it began to change into English.

 _Behind the broomstick and for the Raven, look._

 _Pass:_

 _Άνοιγμα Πριν από τον κύριο_

Behind the broomstick? He had hoped that the translated version would give him some answers, but he was, sadly, disappointed. Harry lay awake in bed for several hours, thinking, before finally falling asleep.

Dreams.

This dream was unlike the two that he had before, those dreams had been in first person, like he was the person, but this time he was floating in the air, observing. A man in a black cloak with the hood up, obscuring his face, walked quickly down a dark corridor, the only light coming from a blue light emanating from the tip of his staff. When the man reached a wooden door at the end of the corridor, he whispered a few words that were too quiet for Harry to hear and the door swung open, revealing a room illuminated by a few candles. The man walked to the center of the room and started drawing on the floor using the bottom of his staff, which left behind glowing blue lines wherever it touched. After a few minutes, a large and intricate design was left on the floor and the man stepped back to look at his handiwork. He lowered his hood and Harry floated around to the front of him so that he could see the man's face.

He looked exactly like Harry!

At least, that was what Harry first thought, but realized that he was mistaken. The eyes were different, while Harry had green eyes; this man had brown eyes. The man started chanting quietly, and in a language that Harry did not recognize. While he was distracted, the door to the room opened and a woman dressed in blue and white wizard's robes and wielding a bow slipped inside.

"It's over, Samuel," She said, "More are coming, and I have the Bow of Calalthas, you don't stand a chance."

Harry recognized her voice; it was the same as the one that he kept hearing in his head. He was snapped out of his thoughts when the man, Samuel, replied,

"You don't understand, Kathrine, I need to do this."

"You've hurt too many people," Kathrine said, "It doesn't matter what you think you need to do anymore."

"I told you, I didn't kill them!" Samuel shouted, before quieting down again, "That does not matter anymore; humanity is almost out of time, don't try to stop me."

She lifted her bow and nocked an arrow, while Samuel spun around and pointed his staff at her. They both froze for a moment before pulled back on the string and released at the same time that Samuel flung a large orb of magic at her. The arrow and the orb met in midair and both flew on as though nothing had happened. There was a bright flash of light in the room that momentarily blinded Harry. When the light faded from his eyes, he saw that the woman, Kathrine was nowhere to be seen, and Samuel was once again chanting over the pattern in the floor, though this time with an arrow in his chest. After a few moments, the pattern glowed brighter and brighter before disappearing. Samuel collapsed to the ground,

"I am sorry."

Then he died.

End

Sorry for the wait, I am a VERY casual writer, and update times will vary hugely.

I am going to do a short(ish) story concerning Ra and James's adventure, I don't know exactly how long it will be, but the first chapter will be coming soon(ish).


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 6

Harry had just about had enough, he wanted to run away into the wilderness to escape all the weirdness that had been occuring in his life. Escaping the target that being the "boy-who-lived" placed on him was just another bonus as far as Harry was concerned.

 _Thursday_

"Hey Harry," Neville said as he ran up besides Harry after Charms, "There's a Hogsmeade weekend coming up, are you going?"

"Probably, I finally got my permission slip signed. You?"

"Yeah, are you going to be bringing anyone along?"

"Nah, I think that I'll just do some shopping and a bit of hiking in woods that aren't likely to get me killed. How about yourself, do you have anyone in mind?"

"Well, I was thinking of asking Hannah Abbott, but I don't know if she will want to go with me."

"You need some more self-confidence, I'm sure that she will accept your invitation, all you have to do is be brave and ask her directly."

Neville said nothing as they continued down the corridor towards the Great Hall.

Later, in Potions, Snape had them brew a depression potion, and Ron brought his bullying to a whole new level, after Harry had finished brewing his potion, Ron dropped a handful of Baneberries into Harry's potion as he walked by to get more ingredients. The volatile Baneberries mixing with the freshly brewed potion caused an explosion to erupt in Harry's cauldron, sending liquid depression flying to all parts of the room. Harry, who had seen the Baneberries in Ron's hand and guessed what was about to happen pulled out his wand to try and stop Ron. He failed to prevent the sabotage, but was able to throw a shield up around his cauldron and, unintentionally, around Ron as well, who was standing directly over his cauldron. The result was that the entirety of the potion splashed over Ron.

Snape, who had seen Ron's sabotage, yelled out, "Detention Weasley, and 50 points form Gryffindor!"

Most of the other students, who had not seen exactly what had happened in the exchange, assumed that Harry had hit his cauldron with a spell as Ron innocently walked by, causing them to be even more angry at Harry, though that anger was now accompanied by a measure of fear, as most had not even seen Harry's wand move, nor heard him utter a spell.

 _Saturday_

Harry boarded a carriage bound for Hogsmeade, he had been lucky enough to get one all to himself; either that, or everyone was avoiding him like the plague because they were afraid he would attack them during the ride. That was a depressing thought.

He wandered through the streets of Hogsmeade for a short while, eventually stopping into the The Three Broomsticks and getting a butterbeer, he sipped his drink for a moment and noticed Neville sitting in a corner across from Hannah Abbott, he caught Neville's eye and gave him a discreet thumbs up from across the inn before realizing that he was receiving a lot of nasty looks from the other patrons of the bar, or at least from the student portion of the crowd. Harry hurriedly gulped his butterbeer and left, there was nothing like a hostile environment to kill ones mood.

He strolled along the street before hearing a strange, quiet voice behind him, he turned to locate the sound of the voice but saw no one. He followed it along the street, it was now in front of him, and seemed to be leading him somewhere. He recalled the whispering that he had heard in the magical forest and realized that this was a similar sensation, though without the heavy feeling. Just before he reached the Three Broomsticks, the direction of the voice changed again this time to his left. What he saw when he turned made his heart race, there was a small two floor cottage with a wooden door and no windows. But what had grabbed his attention was what was on the door, rather than the door itself.

There was a raven carved into the face of the door.

Or, he assumed it was a raven, it was kind of hard to tell due to the distance between him and door. He closed the distance rapidly, almost sprinting to the door in his excitement. He grasped the doorknob and tried to turn it but met with no success, as the door was locked. Frustrated, Harry tried knocking, and after two minutes of waiting, kicked the door. Unfortunately, someone had placed some form of magical protection on the door because, with a flash of light, Harry was flung backwards about twenty feet.

He rose quickly to his feet, in case there was another attack or spell heading his way. When nothing came, he carefully approached the door again and, remembering the small piece of parchment in his pocket said,

" _Άνοιγμα Πριν από τον κύριο"_

 _With a creak, the door swung open slowly before him. Harry drew his wand, and, casting a temporary protection spell on himself, proceeded into the house. It did not look like anything special, if anything, it looked like a dump; there were piles of what appeared to be junk, old books, rusty cauldrons, even the occasional broomstick, though whether they were meant for flying or not was unknown to Harry. Two more steps into the building caused two torches to be lit, illuminating the room further. At the far end of the room, there were two staircases, one going upwards to the second floor, while the other descended into what Harry assumed was a basement._

 _Carefully avoiding the more precarious piles of junk, Harry walked to the stairs that led up._

 _"Lumos" Harry said, holding his wand close to his body; Ra had taught them that, in tight spaces like a house, you should never extend your wand out in front of you because it would be way too easy for an enemy to steal it._

 _It turned out that he didn't actually need the light spell because, like the first floor torches lit automatically when he ascended the stairs. The second floor was similar to the first, it was very cluttered and messy. There was a large desk against the left wall of the room, this intrigued Harry because there was only one thing on the it: a white envelope with a red wax seal. He walked to the desk and picked up the envelope, while Ra would have advised him to check the envelope for curses, Harry was far too impatient and opened it without a moment of hesitation._

 _He pulled out two letters, as well as a small but ornate silver key. The letter read:_

 _ _If you are reading this, then I would like to apologize to you. You reading this letter means that you have found my cottage and have been suffering from the result of my actions while I was still alive.__

 _ _Concealed within the basement is a chest containing several dozen memories that should provide you with a more complete story, but until you locate a pensieve, I will use more basic means to explain to you what this key is for, as well as some of the strange occurrences that have likely been happening in your life.__

 _ _First, my name is Samuel L. Potter, and, assuming that you are descended my brother Benjamin Potter, then I am your uncle, though there may be many generations between us. While I was alive, from 492A.D. To 545A.D. the wizarding world was in very bad shape, there was almost constant war, wizards were fighting each other while muggles began to seriously start hunting wizards, forming special kill-teams that were trained to recognize and defeat magic in it's many forms.__

 _ _If all of this wasn't enough, a new threat emerged in the form of a cult of dark wizards who created vile creatures using techniques that I dare not talk about for fear of this abominable practice starting anew. These creatures, called Noghkank', consumed magic, and stored it; while inside Noghkank', magic would become tainted and lethal to any magic user.__

 _ _Due to the arrogance of the average wizard at the time, the general consensus among magic users was combat this threat head-on, without the help of the muggles, who were immune to the Noghkank' attacks. This foolish decision resulted in hundreds of wizards getting slaughtered by the cult and their abominations. Eventually, myself and a few dozen others reached out to some muggles and asked them for help.__

 _ _We met with varied success, but eventually managed to get some muggle warriors on our side. With the help of these new additions, the tide began to turn. However, there were unforeseen consequences that sprung from the creation of the Noghka__

 _The letter cut off abruptly. Harry was overwhelmed by all the new information that he had just taken in, how had he never been informed that there was a war that involved wizards, muggles, and a cult with magic eating monsters? Surely that subject would have come up at least once in History of Magic, or one of the many books he had read regarding medieval wizards, yet Harry had never heard anything about this, something was very suspicious about the whole affair._

 _Then he realized Samuel had never explained what the key was for; Harry picked it up to study it, the head of the key was engraved with two dragons coiling around a three digit number,_

 _ _307__

 _Harry assumed that it must be the number of a Gringotts vault, after all, the key closely resembled his, although it was a good deal more intricate. Harry pocketed the key, there was no use guessing, he would have to wait until he could get to Gringotts to check his theory._

 _The letter had mentioned that there was a chest containing memories in the basement, so he decided to head down the stars once again before he stopped and realized that he did not have access to a pensieve, so the memories would be useless to him. Looks like that mystery would have to be postponed until later._

 _He picked up the other letter,_

 _ _You have most likely been hearing a woman's voice inside your head. If not, than you are a robber and should not be reading this, not like there is anything I can do about it besides politely request that you stop reading and leave the house immediately without taking any of the items inside. Assuming that you are the former, than I apologize.__

 _ _The woman in your head is named Katharine, she was my friend, co-conspirator, and eventually, my enemy. If you have read the other letter, then you would know all about the trials and tribulations that I faced during my lifetime, so I will skip the details. In ages past, I cursed her from her body into a purely spiritual form, and combined it with a very powerful magic that would bind her to serve the Potter family, my intent was to have her guide the Potter family through the ages, and to be able to recognize the signs of the Noghkank' being brought back again. When I died, I decided to haunt this cottage as a ghost so that I could make sure that my spell had worked, as well as the ritual I carried out in the catacombs of Tenla Ator.__

 _ _The ritual worked, however, many generations of Potters came to see me to report if Katharine had reappeared, but she never did. So, when I had given up hope, I dictated these letters to my Great-Great-Great-Great Nephew, and told him to tell his children that should they ever start hearing a voice in their head, to come to this cottage and read these letters.__

 _ _The point is, I may know of a way to restore Katharine's physical body: you need to find the bow of Calalthas, it is a great relic that should be imbued with some of her power, there is a slight chance that, if you provide a jolt of your own magic, then you may be able to restore her. She will be a valuable ally if she doesn't try to kill you because of what I did to her.__

 _ _P.S.__

 _ _In order to talk to Katharine, you need to drink a potion called the Spiritual Alignment Potion, I believe that the recipe is somewhere in this cottage.__

 _Harry looked around the room, there must have been hundreds of books on this floor alone, assuming the recipe wasn't on one of the thousands of papers laying all over the place._

 _Harry Groaned._

 _After about two hours of magic assisted cleaning, Harry had managed to get the top floor sorted into four piles, books and scrolls, loose papers, random items that looked like they were still in decent condition, and trash._

 _When he stepped outside to get some fresh air, Harry realized that the carriages would be leaving for Hogwarts soon, so he ran back upstairs, he needed to take the books with him so he could look through them while he was in his dormitory. Eventually, Harry decided to shrink the books down and store them all in an empty chest that he had found on the first floor._

 _After shrinking and storing the books, Harry left the cottage, locking the door behind him and levitated the chest alongside him while he walked back to the carriages._

 _End_


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Harry skipped dinner; he was far too excited to take the time to eat after all that he had discovered. He brought the chest to his dorm and placed it on his bed; he checked the time and saw that he still had some time before the next lesson with Ra, so he settled in and began to read.

When it was time for the class once again, Harry returned the book to the chest and shrunk it so that he could store it in his own trunk. There had been a few books that he had almost immediately disregarded upon opening, as they contained some especially vile curses that could kill or maim in ways that made his skin crawl. However, he had found a very interesting book about magical rituals; one in particular had seemed quite useful: The Cleansing Ritual. The book had stated that, over time, a person accumulates dark magic simply by being near lingering dark magic; it could take years before this had any effect on the person, but if left alone could corrupt, sicken, or even kill the person. Harry wondered why he had never heard of this being an issue, and just assumed that it was because there was a lot less dark magic in the world nowadays; regardless, he needed to get going if he wanted to be on time.

When Harry reached Ra's classroom, he paused at the door when he heard Malfoy talking, something that wouldn't normally surprise him. This time was different, unlike his usual pompous, arrogant tone of voice, Malfoy sounded almost… scared; but of what, Harry could not determine.

"But what does it mean professor?" Draco asked

"If I'm not very much mistaken Mr. Malfoy," Ra responded, very seriously, "it means that you need to take a look at the world without the lens that your father has placed over your eyes."

Harry felt guilty for eavesdropping, and opened the door, "Sorry I'm late."

Malfoy quickly put his usual smirk on, and Ra said, "Think nothing of it, we will get started immediately."

Ra handed them their pendants once again, "Today we will be acquiring the gemstones that will be set into your staffs, the place we are going is an old mine in Hungary that was once used for this very purpose, back when staff magic was still in widespread use."

He picked up the portkey and held it out once both Harry and Draco took hold of it; they were all transported to a forest next to a mountain.

"This expedition will not be like the last one, unlike the forest, this mine has the potential to be dangerous, and if we run into anything too bad, you will both return to Hogwarts while I acquire the gems for you," Ra said, "If I get the Gem for you, it won't be quite as good of a fit as if you pick your own, but it will still work. We will move as a group, keep your wands ready."

Ra set out towards the mountain, with Draco and Harry following behind, wands in hand. As they walked, Harry noticed out of the corner of his eye Malfoy occasionally glancing at him. This was odd, in their previous lesson; Malfoy quite obviously avoided looking at Harry, likely because he did not want to start an argument and get removed from the class. Harry disregarded it for the time; there were more important things to think about, like figuring out a way to get to Gringotts during the school year. Perhaps he could sneak into Hogsmeade and find a fireplace to floo from.

They reached the mountain, and Ra tapped a stone with his staff; the stone split cleanly down the middle and the pieces rolled to either side, leaving an entrance easily big enough to allow two people to walk abreast through. Ra ignited the tip of his staff and led the way through, though the light was not bright enough to illuminate the whole room, Harry could tell that it was massive, certainly larger than the great hall at Hogwarts.

"The transfer to wand magic happened incredibly quickly, so mining operations like this were shut down and forgotten very rapidly," Ra said, "Most likely, there will be a storeroom around here that is still full of useable gemstones. That way we won't have to mine our own."

They passed through the first before Ra stopped them, and bent down to the ground. There was a corpse laying there, so old that it no longer had any flesh, though there was the tattered remains of a blue cloak wrapped around parts of the skeleton. Ra picked up the cloak, the back of it was destroyed, but the damage looked too precise to simply be the passing of time, it was like it had been slashed by some frenzied animal. After dropping the cloak, Ra brought his staff closer to the ground and appeared to be searching for something.

"What are you looking for sir?" Harry asked

Ra said nothing and, after a moment, picked up the mangled remains of a wand. He pocketed it, and said, with a troubled look on his face "We must keep moving."

They proceeded onward; what had just happened? It was very concerning to see Ra look that way. Harry glanced over at Malfoy and saw that he too, appeared to be confused at Ra's actions. Ra took a sharp left opened a door, revealing a small amount of floor reaching from the door about four feet before dropping off into darkness. After proceeding through the door, Ra turned to the right and started walking along a downward sloping path that curved with the wall of the room. The path widened with time, becoming wide enough that one could walk on it without fear of going over the edge, the path continued for what seemed like miles, constantly going further and further down.

When they finally reached the bottom, Ra said, "Look for any doors or alcoves with gems, but do not go down that cave there, I am unsure of what is in that direction."

Malfoy and Harry both said, "Lumos" and proceeded to search around the room, though never straying far from Ra. Eventually, Harry found a room that was sealed with a large iron door. It was chained shut, but the chains had rusted to the point where Harry could break them easily. He opened the door and could see the light of his wand reflected off of a great pile of shiny stones.

"I found it!" He yelled to Ra and Malfoy, who both hurried over.

"Nice job Mr. Potter, Now both of you need to start searching through that pile while I investigate something, but if someone, or something, attempts break in, use your emergency portkey's immediately, regardless of whether I am with you or not."

"How will we know which stone to take?" Malfoy asked

"It should be something like choosing the wood from last time, it will just feel right, you'll know."

Ra started drawing some glowing blue symbols on the floor outside of the storage room, and Harry immediately moved to the pile. He searched through the gems picking each one up and casting aside when he felt nothing. After searching for a few minutes, Malfoy whispered, "Potter! Look at this."

Harry walked over to where Malfoy was kneeling and saw what Draco had seen. There was another skeleton in this room, leaned up against the wall with the same cloak as the other one, this one however, was in much better shape and the wand was still clutched in the skeleton's hand.

"This one doesn't appear to have been harmed in any way, so how did the person die?" Malfoy asked

"Maybe the person got trapped in here and died of hunger."

"Not likely, you were able to open this door, I am sure that an adult wizard with a wand could have easily freed themselves."

"Maybe they died from the killing curse and someone closed the room so that the corpse wouldn't be found."

"Also unlikely, unless the person was sitting here, asleep, holding their wand when it happened." Malfoy said, "Honestly Potter, try to think about what you are saying before you actually say it."

"What are you trying to lead up to, Malfoy?" Harry asked, "Or are you just using this as an excuse to insult my intelligence?"

Malfoy glared at him, "Forget it. Let's just find our gems and leave."

Harry returned to his side of the room and thought about what Malfoy had said; it was weird that there were two corpses with wands in this mine especially because, according to Ra, this place had shut down very soon after the adoption of wand magic. He picked up a bright purple stone and felt a tingling spread throughout his whole body, the tingle lasted for about ten seconds before subsiding, and Harry pocketed the stone, now he just had to wait for Malfoy. He looked out into the greater room and saw Ra there, staff alight tapping the walls, and drawing more symbols on the floor.

Eventually Malfoy got up as well, and they walked out of the room towards Ra. When they got near Ra turned and asked, "All done?"

They both nodded, and Ra said, "Excellent!."

Just before they took their portkey's they heard a distant sound, it sounded like a very faint scream, but from something that was most certainly not human. Ra's face turned white and he said, very quietly, "No… it can't be."

Then, turning to Malfoy and Harry, who were quite alarmed by the sudden turn of events, he yelled, "Use your emergency portkey's. Now!" He held out his free hand, and a sword appeared in it, before Harry said, "Safe Haven!"

When he regained his senses, he was standing in Ra's office again, with Malfoy looking slightly dizzy as well, though more confused than anything. What was that sound that could cause such a reaction from Ra?

From across the room, Malfoy said, "What the heck just happened?"

"I have no idea, but I do find it very concerning."

Malfoy nodded.

They exchanged no words for the better part of an hour before Harry decided to break the awkward silence.

"Why do you think that the skeleton was in there?"

Malfoy glared again, but relented after a moment, "The only thing that I can think of is that he was hiding in there, and was too frightened to leave."

"Why didn't he disapparate?"

"Wards maybe, they could have broken down over time."

"If that's the case, then he could have been locked in there and unable to escape because the magic was too strong," Harry said, "and the only reason I was able to get in was because the wards had decayed."

"You're really irritating, you know that?"

After about another half hour, Ra appeared as well. His robes were torn and bloodied, and he was breathing heavily. He sank to one knee leaning on his staff and bloodstained sword.

"Professor!" Harry yelled, "Are you okay?"

Ra nodded, unable to catch his breath enough to speak. After a few moments, Ra finally spoke, "I'll be fine."

He stood up, his sword vanishing from his hand as Malfoy asked, "What happened down there?"

"If I had known what was hiding in that mine, I never would have taken you in there." Ra said, "It's dead now, but the fact that there was one in the first place is horrifying. They were destroyed centuries ago, or so I thought."

"What were?" Harry and Malfoy asked at the same time.

"Nothing you need concern yourselves with for the moment." Ra replied, "For now, just leave your gemstones here with the wood and I will return you to your common rooms."

"But sir-", Harry started, only to have Ra cut him off,

"Not now Mr. Potter." He said wearily, "This class is over, and I recommend that you both get some sleep."

The trip back to their common rooms was completely silent, nobody said anything about what had transpired that night. Harry did not go to his bed, and instead sat on one of the chairs in the common room, staring into the fire and formulating his plan for the next day.

The next morning, Harry went to an early breakfast, he was awfully hungry after skipping dinner the previous night. He ate quickly, wanting to finish before the majority of the students awoke for the morning, and then returned to his dormitory; he retrieved his invisibility cloak and made his way through the secret passageway the Honeydukes basement. Just before he exited the tunnel he whispered, "Homenum Revelio" when the spell revealed not human presence in the vicinity of the trapdoor, he climbed out as quietly as he could.

Unbeknownst to Harry, this precaution was unnecessary, as Honeydukes was closed on Sunday, and the owners were fast asleep due to the time (just after 5:45A.M.). He headed towards his ancestors cabin and entered; he knew that there was a fireplace here, so all he needed was floo powder. He began to search the cabin, starting on the first floor; his search was slow, as he kept getting distracted by other things, mostly books, but occasionally his attention would get drawn to an olds trinket, or letter to Samuel from a name he didn't recognize.

His search took several hours, yet he still met with failure on the first floor, and when he attempted to descend into the basement, found that the door was locked; he tried to open it with the Gringotts key and was unsurprised when it didn't work. The unlocking charm also failed, so Harry decided to commence with his fallback plan. He left the cabin and headed towards the Hog's Head.

He knew that the Three Broomsticks had a fireplace, and you could purchase a small amount of floo powder from Madam Rosmerta, but he was certain he would get recognized and stopped by someone, so he had to resort to a less reputable establishment. The main room was empty apart from the barman and one person in the corner, slumped over a table one hand still wrapped around their drink.

He approached the bar and asked, "Could I get some floo powder?"

The barman eyed Harry for a moment before reaching under the counter, and withdrawing a small pouch, about a quarter of the size of Harry's fist, before grunting "One sickle."

Harry handed him the money and accepted the pouch. There was a small fire burning, and Harry threw the powder in. When the emerald fire flared up, he stepped in and, when he was concealed by the flame, pulled on his invisibility cloak and said, "Diagon Alley!" as clearly as he could.

The force of the whirling flames caused the cloak to billow out around him, but he managed to hold it so that it would mostly cover him until the flames died down. When he came out in the Leaky Cauldron, the cloak was not covering his feet part of his shins, but, luckily, the patrons could not see those parts of his body, as the table nearest to the fireplace was unoccupied. Harry quickly straightened himself and made sure that the invisibility cloak was on all the way as Tom made his way over to the fireplace, to see what came out; finding nothing, he began to inspect the fireplace itself, waving his wand over it to see if there were any malfunctions.

Leaving the bar, Harry tapped the proper bricks with his wand, and the entrance to the alley was opened. He made his way up the street to the massive white building, being sure to give everyone a wide berth in order to avoid contact. When he neared the stairs, he waited until nobody was looking and removed his cloak before heading up the stairs and into the bank, keeping his head down.

He approached one of the goblin clerks and said, "Harry Potter to see vault 307."

"Key?" The Goblin asked, without looking up.

Harry slid the key across the table and examined it closely, before returning the key and calling out, "Stonelurker!" an old goblin walked over, and the clerk said, "Take Mr. Potter to vault 307."

Stonelurker glanced at him before grabbing a lantern and motioning for Harry to follow. They boarded one of the carts and began their rapid descent. This trip took far longer than the one to his trust vault, and they went much deeper.

The cart finally lurched to a halt in front of a massive vault door, and Stonelurker said, "I will wait, wizard."

Harry left the cart and walked to the door; it was made of some kind of some kind of silver metal and was completely plain, except for a small keyhole and a plaque that read:

 _307_

Harry inserted the key and turned it, and the door soundlessly swung open on its own to reveal… a small room, no bigger than his first bedroom, with a handful of silver sickles, knuts.

Harry was let down, it was not as though he needed any money, but he had been expecting something more. Just as he was about to leave, he noticed a small box in the corner. He opened the box cautiously, inside was a strange contraption; it consisted of what looked like a dark brown circular eyepiece about as large as his fist, with a dial and some leather strips that were obviously meant to secure the eyepiece to a person's head.

Harry tentatively slid the eyepiece on, it was too large, but the leather tightened until it fit comfortably on his head. The thought of how well it fit was far from his mind though, because through the lens, he could see a door that was most certainly not there moments earlier. He walked through it and into the actual vault, a larger room filled with all manner of items ranging from jewelry, racks of potions and potion ingredients, medieval weapons such as swords and bows, furniture, books, clothing, and several items on pedestals, though Harry could not tell what any of them were. However, mounted on one wall was something that really caught his attention, a long black coat, with a silver lining and tarnished silver buttons as well as black pants and boots. It was strange; most wizards wore billowing robes that were inconvenient for everything that required agility or speed, but outfit looked like it was meant for battle, especially because, upon closer inspection, Harry noticed several places where the coat was scorched or cut, making it obvious that the coat had seen some combat.

He tore his eyes away from the coat and began to investigate the pedestals. The first one had a branch of Gubraithian fire, at least according to the plaque. Another had something called a Reglentius which appeared to some sort of silver device that ticked but did not appear to have any moving parts. The third and final pedestal had the only thing that he was actually interested, a Pensieve, though he did not have access to the memories, so the large bowl was useless for the time. He wanted to spend more time in the vault, but Stonelurker was waiting for him so he did feel that he needed to hurry.

After a short period of deliberation, Harry decided to bring the outfit that he had examined and the eyepiece, as well as a cutlass that he chose simply because it wasn't too heavy, but it wasn't quite as thin as a rapier or dress sword. He wrapped the sword and sheath, as well as the rest of the clothes in the coat and then returned to the cart.

After the terrifying cart ride to the surface, Harry asked Shadowlurker, "Is there a fireplace here in Gringotts that is connected to the floo network?"

"Right this way." Stonelurker replied, walking down a corridor and into a room that contained only a fireplace and a large pot of powder, "Free floo powder for customers, but don't try to floo into this fireplace, it is meant for exiting only."

"Thank you."

Stonelurker turned and left, while Harry returned to the Hogs Head.

After climbing out of the secret passage back into Hogwarts, Harry immediately made for his dormitory, he did not want a Teacher to inquire about what he was carrying. He passed three students in the common room, all of whom were too fixated on what they were doing to pay him much attention. Once he was safe in his bed, Harry started to think about places that he could practice magic safely, he had access to dozens, if not hundreds of books containing spells, but theory alone could only take him so far. He didn't feel safe with one of the many abandoned classrooms, as a teacher or student could walk in at any time. The forbidden forest was not good either, because, regardless of the many dangerous creatures, his spells might make a lot of noise, or produce intense light, which would draw a lot of unwanted attention.

While he thought, he decided to test the capabilities of the eyepiece, it revealed the secret passage into the vault, but perhaps turning the dial would reveal other things. Harry put it on, and looked about the room, nothing was different, so he turned the dial to the left, it moved smoothly and clicked into place when his vision changed, everything was tinged gray, but if he looked down in the direction of the common room, he could see three small red pulsing shapes. It did not take Harry long to figure out that these were the heartbeats of the students he had seen on his way up. Excited, Harry turned the dial again, this time everything took on a green hue, but nothing else changed. After turning it again, everything became clear, but magnified. The next turn brought him back to the original setting.

He returned the device to his trunk, the only one of those settings that seemed especially useful was the one that allowed him to see people's hearts, it was superior to the Human presence revealing spell because, he assumed, the target couldn't feel anything when he was looking at them. He lay in bed, thinking, before the answer to his current predicament came to him, he could use the chamber of secrets. There was no way anyone in the castle would be able to hear him, and there was plenty of space in there for him to try some potentially explosive spells.

He got ready to go; he needed just a few things: his miniature chest containing the books, coat, eyepiece and sword, his wand, and his _Firebolt._ He threw his invisibility cloak on and grabbed the chest and his broom. He made his way to the chamber passing a few Ravenclaw students who were talking about him,

"Do you think it's true then," one whispered, "Harry Potter has actually become a dark wizard?"

"Seems that way," the other replied, "he's never at meals, and nobody really even sees him outside of classes."

"Not to mention the fact that he cursed the goblet so he could get into the tournament." a third student put in, "I was reading about the goblet, and it looks like it would require some seriously dark magic to cheat."

Harry's temper began to rise, is this really what people thought about him? He knew that no one believed that he had not entered himself into the tournament, but the fact that people could start believing that he was a dark wizard was infuriating, especially after he was proven to be innocent in his second year. He moved past them, their words accompanying him all the way to the bathroom. He ordered the entrance to open, and studied the tunnel carefully; his only way of getting out would be to fly back up the tunnel on his broom. He figured that he would be able to do it, so long as he flew slowly and carefully.

End


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Harry walked through the chamber, he could scarcely believe that he had willingly returned to this accursed place, but it had just seemed so logical that it had taken him some time to remember the memories that were associated with it. He shoved these thoughts aside and pushed forward, learning how to defend himself was too important for him to pass up such a perfect location to train.

The very first thing that he noticed when he entered the main section was the smell, there had been a basilisk corpse rotting in the chamber for two years, and was quite rancid. He would have to get rid of it at some point. Harry tried to ignore the smell as he pushed onward, examining the chamber, it was exactly how he remembered it, except that there was no longer a nearly dead Ginny and a gloating Tom Riddle.

He laid out the items he had brought with him and examined the sword, he had only brought it because he had killed the basilisk with a sword, and was quite sure that none of the spells that he knew at the time would have so much as scratched its hide. Also, the creatures mentioned in Samuel's letter, the Noghkank, which could consume magic had disturbed him, he doubted that they still existed, but if they did, he wanted to have some kind of weapon that could combat them.

He pulled out the ritual book and examined the runes that were to be drawn on the floor, there was easily enough room in the massive chamber to perform such a ritual, but he hadn't brought any sort of writing utensil with him that could be used to make the shapes pictured in the books. For a moment he considered investigating animagus transformations, but decided that it was not convenient for his situation, due to the effort and time that were required to safely carry out a full transformation, So he settled on a book filled with spells meant for battle, both defensive and offensive.

The first spell that he came upon, the Novus Stratix, created two bolts of magic that would wind their way towards a target, weaving and bobbing around in such a way that made it hard to block or avoid, short of a large area shield charm, or conjured wall. These bolts would render the victim unconscious if both hit, and disorient the victim of only one made it through. Though he was able to cast it, and the twin bolts looked like the illustrations, he had no effective way of testing it, as there was nothing in the way of targets apart from the many snake statues, and he doubted that they would attempt to dodge or shield themselves, so until he learned to magically animate objects, he would have to put that particular spell on hold.

The next one that he found was a blasting spell, that, unlike the reducto curse which simply caused things to break quite forcefully, created a fireball, that would consume anything within a few feet of where the spell hit. He tested it out on a few of the statues,

"Shperthyes!"

Nothing happened; he tried again and again, making slight adjustments to his wand motions after each failed attempt until he was certain that he was perfectly emulating the movement shown in the book. After the failures persisted, the only reason that he could think was that he was mispronouncing the word, it was rather strange.

A few more failures later, and Harry moved on to what looked like a slightly easier spell, the Aegis shield spell, which would create dome around the user that would self-sustain for several minutes, and block mild physical and magical attacks, though it would do nothing against a high level curse or a ton of falling rock. Still it seemed like a useful spell that would be useful, if even just in the halls of Hogwarts, as most students knew nothing more than minor jinxs and hexes. Although this could change soon with Professor Ra as the teacher of the DADA class, as he seemed to have no problem teaching them some rather high level "self-defense" spells.

He was able to cast this spell relatively easily, though he had no way of testing his shield, so he just had to hope that it would hold up if he got attacked. He continued in this vein for some time, reading through the books and testing out some of the spells that looked useful to him. He eventually decided that he had done enough research and ended up with the Aegis, Novus Stratix, and Fumaca, a spell that created a large cloud of smoke to confuse an opponent or hide the caster. The best part about the latter spell was that, using the eyepiece, he would still be able to see his opponent's location through the smoke.

Before he left the chamber, he searched through the books until he found what he was looking for, a rather large and ancient looking tome concerning different potions. He began flipping through the pages, looking for the Spiritual Alignment potion that Samuel mentioned in his letter. Eventually he found it in between recipes for two highly poisonous brews, something that Harry found a little concerning, even though he there was no evidence that the book was organized in any way, which made it especially difficult to navigate.

 _The Spiritual Alignment Potion_

 _Causes any objects that are foreign to your body and spiritual/magical in nature to become visible and semi-tangible in front of the consumer. Very useful for identifying magical maladies and curses if a trained professional is not available._

The ingredients list was incredibly long, and Harry did not recognize many of them. Beneath the ingredients, the brewing instructions were also quite extensive and complicated, requiring almost a full day of constant attention in addition to a month of simmering with a long series of stirs once every two days, plus new ingredients being added occasionally in very precisely cut and measured amounts. There was no foreseeable way for him to brew this potion amidst the school year, and it was even less likely that he would be able to do it on Privet drive without one of the Dursleys messing something up. Harry groaned, the problem of being able to give the potion all the attention that it needed was only an obstacle assuming that he could acquire the ingredients and have the skill to prepare them correctly.

The Spiritual Alignment Potion would have to wait.

He packed up the books and returned them to the chest, he did not want them getting damaged by the dampness of the chamber. Then, taking only his Firebolt and the eyepiece, exited the room, closing the door behind him. Once he was at the bottom of the long pipe leading back up to the school, Harry put the eyepiece on again and switched the lens to the one that sensed heartbeats. He mounted his Firebolt and began the flight out of the chamber.

It was a harrowing trip, but only because he did not have a very good idea of where the edges of the tunnel were, due to the darkness. He ran into the top of the tunnel, luckily he was not going very fast, but it still hurt and almost caused him to fall from his broom.

Regaining his senses, he scanned the general area with his eyepiece, seeing no one, he said, " _Open_ ", he had gotten much better at talking in Parseltongue on a whim, even though he had not particularly tried to, it had just started to come more naturally.

He then proceed to the window to get some idea of what time it was, The sun half way over the horizon, so Harry headed down to the Great Hall for dinner after he returned his broom to his dormitory.

When he entered the Hall, the majority of the students quieted to look at Harry, but he just proceeded as normally as possible, sitting down at the Gryffindor table, far from any of his housemates, though this was normally not possible, dinner was nearly over and a large number of students had already left the Hall.

He ate, though not particularly nutritious, as all that remained on the tables were desserts, Harry was able to eat his fill, he was quite hungry after all that had transpired both in that day and the previous one he downed his meal quickly and got up to leave. Two first year Gryffindor students that were chatting just out the door stopped and regarded Harry with fearful eyes before speeding off down a side corridor. Harry grimaced, clearly the older Gryffindor's had done nothing to defend Harry's name, so the younger ones had no reason not to think that Harry was a dark lord.

The more time that he spent at Hogwarts the more he started to dislike the students, the Slytherin students were the worst, being hate-filled bigots that all seemed unified in their dislike for him. But the rest of the school were not much better, they were so quick to turn on him, making huge illogical guesses about the rumors that they had heard and then treating them like absolute truths. The worst part was, when they were proved wrong, Harry was sure that they would pretend that nothing had happened, and expect everything to go back to how it was. It had happened in his second year, and he could see no reason for them to act differently this year.

He began to head for the Gryffindor common room, but decided against this course of action, it would almost certainly be full, so he decided instead to spend some time outside. The air was chilly, but not uncomfortably so, at least not while he was wearing his Hogwarts robes. He walked down to the lake and sat on the shore while he formulated a plan of action to deal with some of the problems in his life.

He had a person trapped in his head who likely hated him, but he couldn't do anything about that until he acquired the spiritual alignment potion, or the bow of Calalthas. The potion was too hard to brew, and he had no idea where to start looking for the bow, so that problem was not something that he could deal with as of yet.

The entire school hated him, but there was naught that he could do to disprove them until he did something that proved his innocence, though there was no monster to kill this time.

The first task was happening in just six days, but he had done nothing to prepare for it.

No matter how he looked at it, he was in serious trouble this year, perhaps even more so than when a giant snake that could kill with a glance was roaming the halls of Hogwarts, or, more accurately, the plumbing of Hogwarts. Worse still, he had no friends to help him through it. He felt like he was being backed into a corner, and was very quickly running out of time.

The only bright spots were that he was learning more about his family history, and the current DADA teacher was the best that he has ever had.

None of his current situations had easy solutions, though one would be resolved shortly, even if he ended up dead from it. The lack of sleep he had over the last few days quickly caused him to fall asleep, despite the immense weight of all his problems and the fact that he was lying on the shore of the lake.

He awoke the next morning, curled up by the lake with a much clearer head than the night before, the tiredness had been stripped from him, and he felt more refreshed than he had in weeks, ever since he had gotten picked for the tournament. Perhaps it was the fresh air, or maybe he felt safer sleeping near the giant squid than with vindictive housemates.

He needed to get to class.

After Charms class, where Harry learned the flame-freezing charm, he approached Professor Flitwick and asked, "Professor, can you teach me how to animate objects?"

Flitwick regarded him for a moment, before saying, "Is this for the Triwizard tournament?"

"Yes." Technically, it wasn't a lie; he would use the animated statues for training, which would likely help him with the tournament.

"Mr. Potter, animation is very difficult for someone of your age, and I would not normally try to teach it to a fourth year, but considering your unique circumstance, I will make an exception."

"Understood, I will try my best, Sir."

"I can teach you some of the basics right now before my next class, and give you something to practice them on, but do not be surprised if you cannot become proficient before the tournament is over."

Flitwick then proceeded to explain some of the wand movements and incantations required to perform the spell, as well as the intent required. "Obviously the charm works best on objects with a humanoid or animalistic appearance, as it will already have the proper extremities required to walk, run, or whatever you want it to do."

Flitwick dismissed him when students began to show up, and Harry left for potions, though he was eager to test out the charm in the chamber. Potions wasn't terrible, Snape managed to hold back most of the snide comments but even when he did drop an insult it was about the quality of his work, as opposed to his personal life. The other students were sporting Cedric Diggory badges and trying to rile him up, as always; but he realized now that it just showed how petty and they were.

Later, when in the chamber, after failing to animate the statues, Harry settled on throwing stones in the air and trying to hit them with stunning curses, something that he was absolutely horrible at, hitting a flying target was much harder than the immobile dummies that they practiced on in Ra's class. He also tried the Novus Stratix spell, but since the Novus Stratix homed in on the stones and did not improve his aim at all, he switched back to casting stunners.

After a few minutes of casting, he was struck again by how nasty the chamber smelled and decided to peruse the books for a charm that would mask the smell. Eventually, he found the spell he was searching for, and cast it on the corpse of the basilisk; it wasn't perfect, but it did significantly reduce the rancid scent, making the atmosphere in the chamber slightly more bearable. He then decided to give the Fumaca charm a try, and cast it into the air before him. Instantly, smoke began to pour from the tip of his wand and quickly fill up the chamber. It was not the kind of choking smoke that fire produces, and Harry found that he was able to breathe normally while enveloped in the cloud. A different problem soon became apparent; he didn't know how to banish the smoke and had no way to search the book for a counter-charm. Harry was eventually able to feel his way out of the chamber, and decided to return another day to see if the smoke remained.

On the day of the first task, Harry spent some time in the chamber, mostly just in order to be alone to help calm his nerves. He scooped up the eyepiece and pocketed it before heading out to the location of the task.

"Welcome Champions!" Ludo Bagman entered the tent, his enthusiastic mood not shared by the champions, "Your task is to retrieve the golden egg, which is made difficult thanks to the dragon in the way!"

He gave a laugh, but it quickly tapered off due to the murderous look Viktor Krum was giving him. Harry was sick to his stomach; he needed to fight a dragon? Were the organizers of this event insane? Ludo produced a bag and each champion reached in and drew out a minute dragon. Harry pulled out an evil looking dragon with spikes and a number four around its neck. He sat down and began to think, his mind racing furiously trying to come up with a way to survive.

"And now, the last, youngest competitor in the tournament: Harry Potter!" Ludo Bagman's magically amplified voice set most of the crowd on the edge of their seats most assuming that Harry would shortly be dead. There was no clapping or cheering as the diminutive wizard stepped into the arena.

They watched as he pulled out his wand flicked it, the incantation not heard by anyone in the stadium. Thick, dark grey smoke began to billow from his wand; there was so much smoke that it completely filled the shield dome that was erected to keep the dragon from torching the crowd.

"And Mr. Potter casts some sort of smoke spell, completely obscuring him from view!" Ludo began his commentary enthusiastically, but quickly ran out of things to comment on, and fell silent. The crowd waited, silently, for some sort of action, but were severely disappointed when, after a mere two and a half minutes, Harry stepped out of the arena with the golden egg under his arm.

 _Two and a half minutes earlier_

Harry stepped into the arena to a silent crowd, not that he really cared; it was not as though he expected them to cheer him on. He regarded the dragon, it was chained so that it couldn't reach him where he stood, though it looked as though it would try anyway, after all, it was protecting its eggs.

"Fumaca." He whispered, the smoke quickly began to fill the arena, and when Harry felt that he was hidden, donned his eyepiece and cast the scent masking charm on himself.

Through the eyepiece, he could see the massive heart of the dragon, the hearts of the crowd, and then, near the dragon, a cluster of tiny hearts, the baby dragons in the eggs. Harry began to work his way towards them, carefully climbing over the rocks, making as little noise as he could. He reached the eggs and felt around before picking up the egg that was cold metal, as opposed to the warm dragon eggs. He began the trip back, heading towards the group of three heartbeats that were near the edge of the arena. When he was near them, he removed the eyepiece and exited the smoke.

He continued walking, telling Madam Pomfrey that he was uninjured when she attempted to take him into the medical tent. The judges gave him low scores, something about how they couldn't properly assess his performance, Harry didn't care, he had been the fastest by far, and the only one that didn't have a scratch on him.

"Congratulations Champions!" Ludo said, "The next task will be on February 26th, the golden egg is your clue as to what the task will be. Good Luck!"

Harry avoided the student body, and did not return immediately to the castle, instead going out to the lake to wait for the crowds to disperse.

End


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The last most recent class with Professor Ra had been short and rather boring. He explained to the two of them the next step that would be taken in creating their staves. He had retrieved the water and occamy skin during the week and ground the skin up before mixing it with the water and placing the wood that they had gotten into the mixture.

"Basically, all that this is doing is strengthening the wood; this is neccesary because otherwise, your staff would begin to shred due to the amount of magic flowing through it." He explained, "Also, this makes the wood more resistant to physical damage as well, you could smash away at these with a sledgehammer and there wouldn't be so much as a dent."

He told them to return in two weeks time and then dismissed them after congratulating Harry on his performance in the first task.

Harry rarely left the chamber over the next week and a half; soemthing that was becoming apparent to anyone that saw him. His skin had gained a sickly pallor, his eyes were always bloodshot, and his face was haggard, his change in appearance only served to further reinforce people's idea that he was going dark.

They were right, to a certain extent, the magic that he had been practicing was becoming increasingly dark, his arsenal expanding to include spells that had some seriously painful effects, like one that scorches people bones, and a particularly nasty cursed fire, though it was not quite as bad as Fiendfyre.

Harry sat on the floor of the chamber, gazing at a tiny vial filled with clear liquid. He had recently returned to vault 307 to search the rack of potions for the Spiritual Alignment potion, and had luckily found some. He stood, and, drawing his wand, poured a miniscule amount of the potion onto his tounge.

Immediately, his vision began to get blurry and he stumbled about the chamber, a loud ringing in his ears. Shapes started to form in front of him. A tall woman cloaked in white light and wearing dark blue robes, and a disturbing black mass that took on a humanoid shape.

The woman, who he assumed was Katharine, was yelling something at him, but he couldn't tell what due to the ringing. Eventually, his head began to clear slightly and he got a better look at what was in front of him. His eyes were fixated on the darker of the two, and he noticed that there were black tendrils stretching from it and wrapping around Katharine, sinking into her form.

"Kill it Harry!" She was yelling, "If it consumes me, it will be strong enough to possess you!"

Harry blasted the darkness with a trio of cutting curses, all of which seemd to simply sink into the entity, with no effect. The darkness turned towards Harry and lunged towards him, its arms outstretched. However, a shining white rope wrapped around its waist and pulled back away from him.

Katharine, who was holding the other end of the rope said, "You need something more powerful, conventional magic does not work against something this powerful. Use-"

She was cut off by the darkness rising to its feet and pouncing on her, wrapping its fingers around her skull, causing her to scream in pain. Harry scrambled backwards, panicking. What was he supposed to do?

He ran over to the large pile of books that he had brought from Samuel's house, he flicked his wand,

" _Accio_ dark curses books!"

Immediately, three books and one scroll flew towards him, he caught one and allowed the others to fall to the ground. Harry began rapidly flipping through the book, searching for any curses that affected the victim's spirit. Finding nothing, he began to scan the second book, and then the third, both as useless as the first. Harry then unrolled the scroll and, seeing that it was written in Greek, cast a translation charm on it, something that he had decided to learn after he was forced to bring the note to Professor Ra for translation. He found several options that could fit with what this thing was, but all except for one looked relatively weak and could be broken by simple curse breaking spells. The one exception however,

 _Horcrux_

 _Crafted by Lord Herpo The Foul_

 _An exceptionally powerful dark magic created by Lord Herpo The Foul, the Horcrux can provide near immortality by splitting the soul of the user into pieces and placing the pieces into containers, imbuing the container with remarkable protections. As long as one of these pieces survives, the wizard can be revived, even if their body is reduced to nothingness._

This book did not, however, provide him with a way of destroying a horcrux, most likely because it was written during Herpo The Foul's reign, and he did not want any weaknesses in his magics to be revealed. He needed to find a book that was not advocating the dark arts, one that would give him some useful information.

" _Accio_ curse breaking books!"

Only one book was summoned this time, apparently Samuel wasn't as interested in breaking curses as he was creating them. The book was filled with various curse breaking spells, and lengthy descriptions about how to unravel complex and many layered curses. Harry found what he was looking for at the very end of the text.

 _Though most curses can be destroyed by careful, precise application of magic, some curses are too powerful for this approach, luckily, curses of this magnitude almost always have to inhabit some sort of object, leaving two viable courses. First, fighting fire with fire, so to speak; especially powerful and destructive dark spells can very easily destroy even the most resilient of curses. Fiendfyre, the Killing Curse, and the Rend spell are the reliable for this. Option two involves using the power of certain creatures to destroy the curse. A Dementors kiss is strong enough, though your chances of convincing a Dementor to kiss the object is very low, and if the curse is on a person, the Dementor will most likely consume the persons soul as well as the curse. There are two ways that a dragon could remove the curse, Dragonfire works well, and if you could get a Dragon to eat the object, the curse would be destroyed. However, the most reliable way is to use basilisk venom, which, though expensive, can and will destroy any known curse with just a small amount._

Harry threw down the book and sprinted towards the decaying carcass. He instictively reached for one of the fangs, but thought better of it and instead used the summoning charm the yank one of the many teeth remaining in the snake's mouth. Then, fang in hand, he made his way back to where Katharine was fighting with the darkness, which he now assumed was a horcrux. Harry noticed that she was no longer moving, and, with a shudder, he realized that the horcrux's fingers had begun to sink into her head.

Wasting no time, he plunged the fang into the thing's back, before being blown backwards when it released a screech and a wave of dark energy that chilled him to his bones. When he regained his senses, he noticed that the horcurx was stumbling about the chamber, the fang still lodged firmly in its back. As he watched, the horcrux began to burn and disintegrate, slowly at first, but eventually being reduced to nothing. Instantly, he felt as though a great burden was lifted from his shoulders, and yet at the same time, he felt like he was missing an important part of his body, like he had just lost a limb.

He also realized now that he knew whose horcrux he had just destroyed. Voldemort's, the same thing had happened in this very chamber to Tom Riddle when he had stabbed his diary with the fang.

Harry rose to his feet and rushed over to Katharine, she seemed to be fine, there was no evidence of the horcux's attack, and her head seemed to be in perfect shape. Harry figured that it must be because she did not have a physical body, and what he was looking at was simply a visual manifestation of her spirit. He could not touch her, so he left her on the ground and waited for her to wake up.

However, he suddenly was overcome with exhaustion thanks to his lack of sleep over the past few days and the ordeal he had just gone through, and fell asleep right there on the chamber floor.

" **Harry**!" A voice was calling to him as he blearily opened his eyes, a voice that he recognized, but could not quite identify.

He sat up and looked at his surroundings trying to remember where he was and what he had been doing. The corpse of a massive snake caught his attention and suddenly all the memories of what he had just done began to come back to him.

" **About time you woke."** The same voice said

"Where are you?" Harry asked, scanning the chamber, yet failing to catch a glimpse of Katharine.

" **Inside your head you dolt!** " She replied forcefully, " **The potion wore off about thirty-three hours ago.** "

"Thirty-three hours! How long was I asleep for?"

" **About a day and a half, getting rid of that horcrux really took it out of you.** " Katharine said, " **Losing something that is essentially part of your soul can do that.** "

Harry stood up slightly unsteadily and walked to the canals of water surrounding the chamber. He splashed some of the ice-cold water in his face.

"Well, now that we can talk freely, I have some questions that I need you to answer."

" **I'm sure you do, you never struck as the most intelligent person, and when it comes to being social, you're almost as thick-headed as Samuel was."**

"Who was Samuel anyway?" Harry asked, "I've been in his cottage as I'm sure you know, but the infortmation that I found about him is spotty at best, even that letter in his cottage is a bit lacking."

" **That letter is missing some very crucial details, like how he created one of the major issues that was mentioned."**

"What?"

 **"Oh yes, Samuel was the one who created the Noghkank'. Well, him and a partner, but we'll get to that in a bit."**

"But why would he create something so evil if he was still willing to help destroy them?"

" **He was a bit deluded at the time of their creation, he was likely so caught up in his research that he did not notice how dark his experimentation had become. However, his partner noticed it before him, and was the one to inform the authorities of the questionable nature of his experiments."**

"Who was his partner?"

" **I am unsure, his identity was kept secret for his own protection. What I do know was that Benjamin Potter and I were the ones to go and confront Samuel about the claims made by his partner. Benjamin because he was his brother, and me because I happened to be available at the time."**

"What were you back then?" Harry asked, "I mean, the aurors weren't around until well after the middle ages."

" **Before there were aurors, there was the laniatum excubiarum, or sentinels, essentially the same thing as aurors, except more like soldiers than police, but that is not important, what matters is that Samuel was extremely paranoid and thought that Benjamin was not actually his brother, so he attacked. We fought back, but Samuel was extremely skilled and would have almost certainly murdered the both of us if not for the timely intervention of Estienne Malfoy."**

"A Malfoy helping a Potter?"

" **Estienne was from when the Malfoy's still lived in France, they used to be on very good terms with the Potters, what with them both being prominent houses in their respective countries. Anyway, Estienne surprised Samuel and knocked him out. Luckily, we were able to force Samuel to see what the monstrosities that his experimentation had wrought, so he helped us to destroy them for good, or so I thought. Turns out that he restarted his work in secret several years after things had calmed down, and this time he was much more careful. He never created something as bad as the Noghkank' again, but this time we didn't take any chances, I killed him."**

"I saw that happen in one of my dreams, did you make me see that?"

" **No, I can only assume that one of my memories leaked into your dreams."**

Harry cast a few cleaning charms on himself and began to leave the chamber, as Katharine continued talking.

" **Now that I have bored you with unimportant information, we need to get back to what really matters, making sure that you survive this tournament."**

"I though you hated me?"

" **Don't get me wrong, what Samuel did is still fresh in my mind, but his stupid spell means that I will only manifest in whoever the head of House Potter is, so if you die now without producing any heirs, than I will be sent to limbo, drifting aimlessly for all eternity without any hope of being restored to life. So get married, have a few kids, and then you can feel free to go and die."**

"How can I bring you back?" Harry asked as he sealed the entrance to the chamber behind him. "Samuel said to find the bow of Calalthas, but I hardly think that I can trust him anymore."

" **Finding the bow would be worthless, due to its unique properties. You see, this particular bow is special because it and its arrows were made by muggles from a material that magic simply could not exist in or in a small area around. This meant that spells could not harm or transfigure it, and magical shields could not stop its arrows. It was sued by a numerous muggles over the years, and has claimed the lives of a great many wizards. The fact that Samuel thinks that this bow could revive me is simply because he can't fathom the idea that he was defeated by something made by muggles. If you really want to revive me, find my staff."**

"Where is your staff?"

" **How do you think that I am supposed to know that?" She replied angrily "I have been occupying the minds of Potters for generations, and most of them, I couldn't even talk to like I am able to talk to you!"**

Harry slipped his eyepiece on and decided against wearing his invisibility cloak, so what if people thought he was a dark wizard, its not like they were going to start attacking him, they were too scared of him anyway.

Perhaps it was because he had rid himself of the horcrux, or maybe it was because he finally felt rested after sleeping for over a day; but he had drive once again, there was a tournament to win, a staff to find, and a dark lord to kill. Voldemort was still alive Harry was sure of it, so he had to be ready when Voldemort decides to make a reappearance.

End


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Harry waited until the end of the dinner feast before making his move, when the students were leaving, he slipped into the crowd and made his way up to the head table.

"Professor Dumbledore, I need to talk to you about something." He said, "In your office if you wouldn't mind."

Dumbledore looked a bit taken aback, but replied, "Certainly my boy, we can head there right now."

It was a surprisingly short walk, as Dumbledore, walking fast, took several shortcuts that went straight through walls. The gargoyle jumped aside as soon as Dumbledore approached, and when they were both seated in his office Harry spoke,

"Professor, why didn't you tell me that I was the container for one of Voldemort's horcruxes?"

If Dumbledore had looked surprised before, then Harry's words downright shocked him, "How did you find out?"

"I've been doing some research," He lied, "But the important thing is why you didn't tell me."

"The reason why I didn't tell you is because I, to my immense shame, could not find a way to destroy it without killing you." Dumbledore said sadly, "If I had told you, you would've been consumed by the desire to find a solution, and your fruitless search could prevent you from having a normal childhood."

Harry was a bit angry, but though his actions were a bit misguided, Dumbledore had good intentions for him. Looking up at Dumbledore again, Harry could see that the man was very ashamed by his failure to find a solution.

"I understand the reason behind your decision, and now that I know why you did what you did, I would like to inform you that the problem has been dealt with." Harry said, before explaining how he destroyed the horcrux, though he left Katharine, Samuel, and the vault that he had gotten the potion from out of the story.

Dumbledore was crying with happiness by the end of the story, but spoke up again, "What is this Spiritual Alignment Potion you speak of, and why were you in the chamber?"

Harry anticipated the question about the chamber, but the fact that Dumbledore didn't recognize the potion that he used threw him off.

Thinking fast, Harry replied, "The Spiritual Alignment Potion was a very old medical potion that became obsolete when wand-based diagnostic spells were invented. It was used mainly to identify magical maladies, but I figured that if I had something that could kill a horcux with me, that I could end it right there."

"Fascinating, and simply brilliant!" Dumbledore exclaimed, "In all my research, I never thought to re-purpose old remedies."

"Professor?" Harry asked, "Do you know how many horcuxes Voldemort has? I know that I've destroyed two, his diary being the first, but I can't help but think that he is still alive."

Dumbledore sighed, "You are correct, Voldemort does have more horcruxes, I believe that he made a total of seven, though this is merely a guess, and my thoughts on their locations are more guesses."

"Do you know if Voldemort has a new body yet?"

"My sources tell me that he is but a shade of his former self, though I am sure he will not remain that way for very long." Dumbledore replied, "You needn't concern yourself with this, now that your horcrux has been destroyed, your involvement with Voldemort has ended."

"Understood," Harry said, though he did not believe him, there was no way that Voldemort would leave him alone after the embarrassment that Harry caused him as a child. "Farewell, Professor."

"Goodbye for now Harry, you cannot believe how much of a relief this has been for me."

Harry left, leaving Dumbledore behind whistling some merry tune.

"Katharine?"

" **What?"**

"Do you know of a way to get into the basement of that cottage?" Harry asked

" **Why do you want to get in there? We've already established that he is a liar."**

"Call me distrustful, but why should I believe you? It's your word against his, and I don't see a reason why I should trust you more, until I review the memories."

There was a moment of silence, before Katharine reluctantly said,

" **It is locked with a blood seal, the keyhole is just a red herring, all you need is a bit of blood to enter."**

Without another word, Harry started to head for Hogsmeade, casting a disillusionment charm on himself as he went.

Katharine was not lying about the blood seal, he cut his thumb and the door swung open as soon as he touched the knob. It revealed a set of stairs leading down into darkness, which Harry started down, lighting his wand as he went. The room was damp, small, and empty, save for a large chest sitting in the middle of the room on the floor. He opened the chest, which contained a great number of labeled vials, each filled with multiple memories.

"His letter wasn't entirely composed of lies, then." Harry said.

" **So it would seem."** Katharine answered shortly.

Once again, Harry made the trip to Gringotts and then back again, though this time he grabbed the Pensieve. Placing the Pensieve on the ground, he grabbed the vial labeled 1 and poured it in, as the book he had read on the subject instructed. Just as he was about to stick his head in, Katharine spoke up,

" **Wait!"**

He stopped, "What?"

" **Um, it might be cursed, and you could get stuck in his memories."**

"Well I guess that neither of you were being entirely truthful with your accounts of what happened back then."

" **What makes you say that?"** Katharine replied indignantly

"You and I both know that there is no way to curse Pensieves, the runes are far too powerful to be tampered with." Harry replied, "If there is something that you don't want me to see, then too bad, because I am going to look through each and every on of these memories."

He gave her a moment to reply; when she said nothing, he lowered his face to the Pensieve.

 _Memory #1_

A teenage Samuel looked up from the papers he had strewn across his desk,

"What did you say?"

The man he was addressing sighed, "Even if you are some sort of prodigy, you really need to pay more attention when you are working."

"I'm paying attention now Gil."

"What I was asking for is an update on your progress on translating those scrolls we found in Arkoudi."

"I have made some progress, they definitely do not match any known language, and they seem to be oddly resistant to my magic." Samuel replied, "Oh, and most interestingly, the paper itself appears to be magical in nature, it does not react normally to water or fire."

Gil groaned, "Did you try to burn the only artifacts we managed to salvage after all those months our excavation team was slaving away on that accursed island?"

"Only a small scrap of each scroll," Samuel said dismissively, "but don't worry, it appears to be completely nonburnable, and water just runs off of it. This probably also explains why my efforts to translate it magically also met with failure."

"Okay, so we know that they are tougher than regular paper, but that's hardly noteworthy, after all, any mage worth his salt can make a piece of paper fireproof. You've got to give me something I can tell the chief."

"I don't think you understand, the paper is not actually paper; as far as I can tell, it is pure magic that has been forced into the shape of a scroll of paper."

Gil was starting to understand, and get excited about the implications of what Samuel was talking about, "So what you're telling me is that the physical composition of these scrolls is magic, right?"

"Exactly, this is unlike simple conjuration, where the object created is made from mundane materials."

"Okay, this is great." Gil said, leaving the dimly lit room, "But I still need to get it translated and right now, you are our best option, but if you take too long, I'm giving this project to Agnes."

"You can count on me Gil!" Samuel shouted after him, before returning to his work.

While Samuel was poring over his work, the door behind him silently opened, and a figure began to approach Samuel from behind, though none of the persons features were distinguishable, likely because Samuel never knew who this person was. The figure then clubbed Samuel with its staff, and the memory went completely black, Harry thought that it was over, but after a few moments, everything cam back into focus, and Samuel began to stir.

Samuel stood up and when he looked at his desk, he realized that all his research, including the two scrolls, were missing. He summoned his staff from where it leaned against the wall and threw open the door, yelling about a thief. Immediately, several other witches and wizards joined him, all dressed in similar brown robes.

"A thief?" One of them said, "Where?"

"I don't know, somebody knocked me out and took everything!" Samuel said frantically.

Gil pushed his way to the front of the group, "Everything? Even the scrolls?"

Samuel nodded, "We have to get after them!"

"Well, at least we should be able to track them," Gil said.

Samuel's face fell, "Actually sir, I don't know if we can."

"What do you mean?" Gil said, before coming to a realization, "You did put a trace on your research and those scrolls; didn't you?"

Samuel said nothing, but his face betrayed his answer, and Gil quickly became furious.

"I've told you a thousand times that you need to be more careful!" He roared, "You just threw away everything that we discovered on Arkoudi. Do you even know how much that expedition cost?"

Samuel shrunk back as Gil continued his verbal assault, the other people in the hallway returning to their individual rooms.

"Your arrogance has just put all of our jobs on the line!" Gil said, finishing up his tirade, "Now go to your office and stay there until I return to deal with you."

As Gil was walking off, he called back to Samuel, "You'd better hope that our trackers can find this thief, or else there is no hope for you to remain here."

Samuel slunk back into his office, downcast, and slumped heavily into his chair. There was no way that the trackers would be able to retrieve his work, the thief was probably in another country by now and without a trace to follow, it was completely hopeless. After a while, Gil returned, looking just as livid as before, though he was now flanked by two more wizards wearing gray robes and carrying staves, with swords visible in their sheathes.

"Samuel Potter, You are hereby dismissed from your post as researcher for Great Historical Confraternity of Magical Europe, and are banner form any and all GHC research stations, schools, or GHC owned sites." Gil said formally, his eyes never straying Samuel's, "You may return your robes and leave peacefully, or I will have you escorted out."

Samuel doubted that he would be escorted, thrown would likely be a more fitting word. However, he kept these thoughts to himself as he removed the outer robe that designated him as a member of the GHC and handed it to the guards. Then, picking up his staff, he walked out of his office and the GHC building, his eyes not leaving the floor. The gates opened automatically for him, and shut behind him. He knew that he would never be returning to this place, but spared one last glance back at the massive research center, which now appeared to be nothing more than a small house in the middle of the woods.

Samuel disapparated and the first set of memories ended.

" **I had no idea."** Katharine said, her voice softer than usual, **"That's probably why he was convinced that we were just trying to steal his work, being a researcher for the GHC at such a young age is quite impressive and a serious honor, and getting dismissed like that must have really hurt him."**

Harry said nothing as he retrieved the second vial, he hadn't known Samuel personally, so he really had not observations to make. He poured the second set of memories in and once again, entered the Pensieve.

 _Memory #3_

Samuel was hiking up a narrow path cut into the side of a mountain while snow swirled around him and high winds buffeted the mountain face. He was dressed in thick fur robes and was carrying his staff. In addition to his robes, he was cloaked in a field of green shimmering magic that became more visible every time a gust would hit before fading back to normal.

Eventually, he made it up to a point where the path stopped climbing and widened until two people could easily stand side by side on it. Samuel put his back to the mountain and sat down for a moment to catch his breath. The rumor of ancient ruins secreted in these mountains seemed more believable than most, after all, somebody had to create that path, and there was definitely some magic here, as he was unable to apparate back to his camp at the base of the mountain.

Samuel continued on, he wanted to be off the mountain before night fell and wasn't entirely sure how much further he had to go. As he continued climbing, he got a bad feeling, something felt off.

Before he could act, he was lashed by a magical attack, the force of which blasted apart some of the stone around him and sent him flying. He was launched well out of reach of the path, and thrust out his staff, forming tendrils of magic that worked their way into the crags of the mountain and held firm. However, he was now swinging back towards the mountain, and only barely had enough time to shield himself again before impact.

He hung there for a moment feet against the mountain, the attack had broken his first shield, if that had not been there, Samuel was quite certain that he would be in pieces by now. Looking up towards the path, he considered his options, the magic he had used to suspend himself was holding fine, and he knew that he could probably make it back down the mountain safely. No, he decided, he had not come this far to be scared off by a single near-death experience so he pushed off of the mountain face and rapidly shortened the tendrils holding him, causing him to fly back up the mountain, his momentum carrying him past the path and into open air, snapping the tendrils.

He scanned the ground below him as he started to fall, and saw something on a ridge that stood out from the stark white snow. This was almost certainly the person that had attacked him so, as he began to draw closer to the rock, blasted the figure with enough magic to knock out a Hippogriff. Then, as he fell past the ridge where the person was, made more tendrils to catch himself before again shortening them, though much slower than before, so that he was able to climb up onto solid ground once again.

Samuel grabbed the strange wizard's staff, and bound the man, conjuring ropes to secure his feet and hands before magically reviving him. He swung his head back and forth, trying to find who defeated him while still very bleary due to being knocked out by such excessive force.

"I'm right here." Samuel said flatly, "Now please inform me as to why you decided to attack me."

"I was just following orders, I swear!" The man said fearfully, apparently he was a coward.

"Whose orders?"

"Creepy guys wearing dark green cloaks! They hired me and the boys to protect them while they explore these mountains."

"Have they found anything?"

"Yeah, they set up camp around the other side of the mountain and sent me out to watch the path."

"What did they find?"

He shook his head, "I don't know! The boss just sent us out here and said that none of us were allowed near this tent they had set up."

Samuel threw the mercenary's staff off of the ridge, and said, "I suggest you leave this mountain at once, if I catch y

ou following me, I will kill you."

As he was walking away, he caused the ropes to disappear. Samuel began to head in the direction that the man had indicated. As he got closer and began to see the light of the camp, he wrapped himself in magic that offered no protection from spells, but made him completely invisible to the naked eye.

Samuel knew that his footprints would still be visible, so he stayed a good distance away from the camp. There were eight people that he could see, walking about or standing around the fire. There were three large tents arrayed in a semi-circle around the fire. Samuel figured that there could be any number of people in those tents, so he would have to be extremely careful. A short distance away from the fire and other tents was a smaller tent, big enough for perhaps two people. Walking closer to the camp, he could start to make out what they were saying.

"Why are we still here?" One of them said gruffly, "We've taken them where they wanted to go, and its not like anyone is going to find them up here."

One of the mercenaries who was walking around came over to the fire as well, "We are still here because the gold that they promised, not a small amount mind you, would only be delivered after they safely reached the base of the mountain again."

"How long is that going to be?" The one who first spoke moaned.

"As long as it takes them to complete their business."

"What is their business anyway?" Another mercenary asked, "all six of them have been in that tiny tent for days now. How do we know that they haven't gone back down without us?"

"It doesn't matter what they are doing, and I know that they are still there."

"How do you know that, boss?"

"Because I talked to them you idiot!"

Samuel looked over at the small tent with renewed curiosity, it would probably be big enough to just barely cover the entrance. He carefully began to sneak over to the tent, he did not have to be quiet, the wind muffled the sound of his movement easily enough. The tent had protections, he was almost certain of that, so he began to probe it with magic, just enough to tell him if there was something there, but not enough to trigger anything. Sure enough, there were several layers of dark magic surrounding the tent. They were strong, but whoever created them was not a master, and so Samuel started to unravel them, starting with the outermost layer first.

It took several minutes, but luckily none of the mercenaries seemed keen to move away from the fire, so he was left undisturbed as he finished his careful work. When the last ward was removed, he moved the tent flap to the side and slipped in.

The tent had not been magically expanded, it was just there to cover a circle of stone in the ground. Samuel's pulse quickened; after so many years of fruitless searching he had finally found it, the entrance to the fabled city of Lakmane. There had been many stories of its existence, a great under ground city that once inhabited by a people whose magic was so powerful that they could move the stars in the sky, make the sun go dark, and split mountains with but a thought. The stories of their abilities were many and varied, though Samuel was certain that most were exaggerations.

The circle itself was nothing much to look at, it had probably been covered with intricate designs at one point, but these had long since faded away. The circle, though heavy, moved easily enough and allowed for an opening that was just big enough for a person. The passageway was long and went down rather steeply; it would be cramped for a large person, but Samuel was quite thin and relatively short for his age, so he fit easily.

The passage eventually opened up into a larger room, and Samuel could see light through an opening in the walls. Standing up straight, he walked to the opening and saw a long hallway, with floating lights periodically placed along it, revealing plain stone walls. He walked along as quietly as he could, not dropping his invisibility magic and came to a large door that was made from a dull gold and without any sort of design. Samuel pushed to door open, his staff at the ready, revealing a room that was similar to the hallway in that the walls, floor, and ceiling were made of stone. However, surrounding the room on the walls was one continuous design and, though it appeared to be nothing but a random collection of lines to Samuel, there were six wizards in green robes intently studying different parts of the wall. They had apparently been alerted to his presence, even though the door had been completely silent, because they spun around as one, staves flying to their hands.

Samuel readied his own staff, and created a powerful person shield as they launched their attacks. Waves of brilliant magic pushed him backwards and out of the room, but his shield held. One of the wizards pointed his staff at Samuel, a lance of magic forming at its tip, and said, "Leave now or we will be forced to kill you."

The wizard's voice was weird, it was a sort of raspy gargle that chilled Samuel to his bones. The wizard's face was still shrouded in darkness, even though the light coming off of he magical lance should have been enough to illuminate it.

Samuel said nothing, and stood his ground, even though there were six of them, he would not give up so easily.

"You will regret this."

The wizard blasted the lance at Samuel, who used his magic to shut the door to the room. The lance made it through, as expected, but by the time it reached him, it did not have enough power to pierce his shield. The wizards flung open the door and resumed their attack. Samuel was able to neutralize, dodge, or redirect almost all of their attacks, and the ones that got through were absorbed by his shield. He knew he could not keep this up for long however, and needed to go on the offensive. Releasing a shock wave of magic that made the wizards stumble and momentarily cease sending magic his way, Samuel leapt towards them, spinning his staff and releasing two thin, incredibly sharp discs at two of the wizards, one of whom was able to dodge, while the other lost his head. His enemies recovered quickly, but with one less, and Samuel now in the midst of them, their attacks were less effective, as they had to worry about hitting each other.

Samuel was able to kill another two of them in short order; they really weren't especially skilled combatants. A powerful swing of his staff sent another crashing into the wall, unconscious. The fifth fell with a deep slash across his midsection. The final standing wizard, the one who had launched the lance at him earlier, put some distance between the two of them and began to attack wildly, blasting magic in Samuel's general direction, but with no finesse or focus. These attacks were easily absorbed by his shield which he had restored to it's full strength. Samuel sent tendrils of magic along the ceiling which deprived the man of his staff, something that any wizard in his right mind could have stopped.

"Who are you?" Samuel demanded as he approached the disarmed wizard.

"Heh, heh, heh" The wizard laughed, "He said that you would be too much for us."

"Who said that?"

"The master, the one who walks behind the shadows." The man replied, before letting out another raspy laugh. Then, he, along with the other wizards that Samuel had defeated, appeared to deflate before his eyes with smoke coming out from under their hoods. Samuel was disturbed, somebody had known that he was coming here, yet according to the mercenaries, they had already been hear for a few days, which was longer than Samuel had even considered this mountain as a possibility. The way that they disappeared was also quite strange; were they even dead?

He returned to the room that he had first encountered them, there was a table in the very middle of the room, and on it was a small closed box. A careful magical examination of the box revealed no traps or defenses, so he opened it up and drew out a small eyepiece. Putting it on, Samuel's jaw dropped at how different the room looked around him. Instead of the indecipherable designs that wrapped the room before, there was what now looked like a series of maps, all closing in on one single location, though he could not tell what the location was, as he did not recognize the language that was used to label the maps.

Samuel conjured several blank papers, as well as a quill, which he used to roughly record the maps that he could see. When his work was done, he stored the maps and the eyepiece in a satchel that he had concealed in his robes.

 _Memory #3_

Samuel swore quietly as he downed a shot glass of some sort of rum. He was so close to finding Lakmane. He had spent three years trying to translate those maps to no avail, he was certain that he would be able to do it in a matter of days if he had access to the GHC's resources. However, he could not just ask them for access, he was sure that they would just steal his maps and take all of the credit themselves. But he could not just give up on this quest, if he found the mythical city, his reputation would be restored, people would forget about his mess-up all those years ago with the Arkoudian scrolls.

He sighed a stood up, leaving the Muggle inn behind, it was much easier for him to get a drink in muggle establishments because nobody recognized him. Apparently the failure of the Arkoudi expedition had cost a lot of people a lot of money, and he was the GHC's scapegoat; combine that with the famous Potter name, and almost everywhere he went in Magical Europe, people recognized him.

He had never been to close to his family, he was on good terms with all of them, but it had been many years since he had seen them, he took the GHC's offer to work with them without a second though and hadn't once gone home. Samuel thought about returning several times after the GHC had dismissed him, but always decided against it; he wanted to be a famous researcher when he finally saw them again, not some failure that had messed up the biggest find of the century.

He turned up a dirt path leading out of the town, and became acutely aware that someone was following him. He knew that there had been someone behind him as he was walking away from the inn, but this was strange, it was unlikely that they were going the exact same way as he was, after all, London was in the complete opposite direction of where this road was leading. As far as Samuel knew, there was essentially nothing along this road for many miles.

Samuel walked out a bit more before turning suddenly into the woods on the side of the road and, as soon as he was hidden from the road, turned invisible and waited. He was not taking any chances, there had been several attempts on is life as of late, usually assassins hired by the wizards that he had fought in the map room, though sometimes it would be wizards wearing the same type of robes themselves. He had discovered nothing more as to who their master was, and had long since given up trying to question them.

That being said, he did not want to just attack somebody because he was paranoid that they might be following him, so he decided to see who this person was. They burst into the woods, looking like just any other farmer, at least until a staff appeared in their hand and they started using magic to search for him. He didn't give this one a chance, and knocked him flat on his back with a sudden magical attack which also sent the assassin's staff spinning into the woods, before he bound him and left. He didn't usually kill the normal assassins, unless they seemed particularly evil, and they didn't often try to come after him again after being taken down so easily.

"Wait," The man said, "I'm just a courier, I have a message for you."

That got Samuel's attention, "A courier you say? Now why didn't you just approach me on the street?"

"The person who sent the message said that I should wait until you were alone." The courier said, "Top-secret, that's what he said."

"Well, lets have it then." Samuel said impatiently, it was unlikely that this man was lying, no real assassin would have started searching for him before even shielding themselves.

The courier looked at him, "It's in my bag. But I can't exactly get at it currently."

Samuel did not unbind him, instead, he reached out with magic and opened the courier's satchel before withdrawing envelope. After checking it for curses, he opened it.

 _I know the ancient language of Lakmane. We can help each other._

 _Come to the Iron Door Inn as quick as you can._

Samuel was almost tempted not to go; this could very easily be a trap, but why would a wizard select a crowded location like the Iron Door if they wanted to kill them. So, without another moments hesitation he unbound the courier and disapparated.

He was able to apparate to a location just outside of London, and made haste to the inn. When he arrived, he realized that he did not exactly know what he was supposed to do, so he bought a pint and sat in a corner table.

He watched people come and go for almost an hour. Though he started to feel as though this was nothing more than a prank, as far as he knew, nobody knew about the maps that he had found other than the strange cult that he was battling, so he remained seated.

The innkeeper suddenly announced, "I have a message here for someone named Samuel Potter."

That was strange, the innkeeper had been visible the whole time, and nobody had given him a message, or done anything more than order drinks as far as Samuel could see. Nevertheless Samuel got up and walked to the bar, "I'm Samuel Potter."

"Right, here you go." The innkeeper handed him a note.

 _Attic room immediately._

Samuel proceeded up the stairs and when he came to the attic room, he readied his staff and knocked on the door. It swung open almost immediately, revealing an extremely frightened looking man.

"Potter?" He asked

Samuel nodded, "And you are?"

"Digsby, Peter Digsby." He answered hurriedly, "We must be quick, the Cult of Tyne can't be far behind."

"Cult of Tyne?" Samuel asked, "Those wizards with green cloaks?"

"Yes, nobody knows what they actually call themselves, but the laniatum excubiarum call them that because they seem to be the most active near the River Tyne."

"Right, now, you said that you now the Lakmane language?"

"No, I don't know it myself." He responded, "But the one who sent me here, he knows it."

"Then why didn't he come here himself?" Samuel demanded, becoming very suspicious.

"He can't return the England, they'd hang him!"

"Who's they? The Cult?"

"No, the laniatum excubiarum would." He said, "Look, he just said to give you these."

Peter thrust a book into Samuel's arms, before continuing on.

"He said that these would help you find him, now get out of here! The Cult wants you, not me!"

The door was slammed in his face, and as he turned to go back down the stairs, he heard from the barroom the unforgettable voice of one of the cultists. The innkeeper replied with something, but Samuel could not make out either partie's words. He threw the book into his satchel and, using magic to open unlock the door, pushed his way into the nearest room on the second floor.

He vaguely heard the voice of an angry person as he sprinted through the room and flung open the balcony door before jumping down onto the street. He then took off along one of the cobbled streets in no particular direction, just trying to get as far away from the Iron Door as quickly as possible.

End


End file.
